


The Demolition Log of Stanford F. Pines

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Grunks being Grunks, I could just watch these two being wacky mismatched sitcom buddies all day, Random humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: Summer's over and done. The Falls have been saved from a triangular menace. Yet some questions still remain. Follow the elder Pines twins on the journey that starts after the kids have gone back to Piedmont and ends with them fighting krakens in the arctic.





	1. Boogers and Beginnings

Then:

_ “It’s morning, it’s morning, it’s morning!” _

_ Ford rappelled down to the lower bunk and landed with feet akimbo on the frame. _

_ “C’mon Stan, the sun’s up! You know what that means!” _

_ Stanley sat up, hair askew like a wildfire. “You bet I do!” _

_ “EXPLORATION TIME!” The twins yelled in each other’s faces.  _

_ The grey hint of light at the window did indeed vouch that it was technically morning. Stan tossed his blankets off, to reveal that he was already fully dressed with socks and shoes.  _

_ Ford held up a bag greasy at the corners. “I already made us some sandwiches and a thermos of ovaltine!” _

_ Stan held up a box. “Well I packed the compass and a pocketknife!’ _

_ “Well I packed the notebook in case we need to record any new species!” _

_ “Well I packed the magnifying glass to burn ants!” _

_ “Well I packed some handkerchiefs!” _

_ “Well I packed some bogers!” _

_ Ford collapsed away from Stan’s encroaching face, laughing feebly. “Eew, what’s wrong with you?” _

_ Both brothers giggled furtively as they packed their equipment in a knapsack. Once out the front door and on the street, the boys looked at each other with a madcap grin. Thrusting their fists in time with the words, they chanted “Pines! Pines! Pines!” all the way down the sidewalk. _

 

Now:

Ford looked at the red-threaded whites of his eyeballs in the mirror. He moved a fingertip along his eyelid, the sclera compressed correspondingly. He let go of his face and blinked. 

Ford retrieved his glasses from the side of the sink and put them on. He patted a smoldering patch on his chin and turned his head this way and that, studying his own face in the mirror.

He padded down the hall to a door and rapped with his knuckles. A sound that may have been a grunt came from inside.

Ford rapped again. “Stanley, it’s time to get up.”

A noise not unlike a bear chewing a wad of saltwater taffy issued from the door.

Ford knocked continuously as he opened the door, chanting in time with the blows. “Get-up-get-up-Stan-ley-get-UP!”

Stan rolled over on his side so his back was to the door. His fez sat beside his denture glass on the nightstand beside him.

Ford sighed.  _ Okay Stanley, you leave me precious little choice. _

Setting the fez aside, Ford picked up the glass. He held it over Stan’s head and tipped it a little.

Stan sat up sputtering. “Hey, shixer, what givesh?”

Ford bit back a mischievous grin. “It’s time, Stanley. I thought you wanted to do this thing with me.”

Stan snatched the glass away and made the necessary adjustments. “That doesn’t mean I want to get up at the buttcrack of dawn!”

“Stanley it’s 10:30.”

Stan rubbed his eyes and donned his glasses. He immediately squinted in distaste. “Ugh, did you replace my window with a magnifying glass?”

“C’mon, Stanley, there’s plenty of sun out out.” Ford helped him out of bed with an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get a good start on the day.”

Stan squinted irritably. “You get a good start on the day. I'm getting some coffee.”

The two brothers bustled around the kitchen in a synchronized dance. Ford put grounds and water in the coffee maker, Stan started the stove. Stan cracked eggs in a bowl, Ford made toast. Ford put their mugs(one reading “I survived Weirdmageddon and all I got was emotional scars”, the other bearing a picture of the Antikythera mechanism) on the table, Stan got plates out of the cupboard. Stan scratched himself with the spatula, Ford snorted something unidentifiable into a napkin.

It had taken surprisingly little time for them to sink into routine. It felt like the kids had gone back to Piedmont only yesterday, even though it was more like yesterweek. They were still in the Falls because—

“You wanna run this by me again, Sixer?” Stan said as he plunked down at the table across from Ford. Ford set their coffee mugs exactly across from one another. They took simultaneous sips.

“I left several...experiments and other unfinished business around the Falls. I cannot in good conscience leave again without taking care of them.” Ford took a bite of toast. 

“Yeah, I remember that part.”

“Well, I figured since you weren’t busy managing the Mystery Shack…” Ford looked innocently out the window.

“Great. I'm retired for all of a day and I get pressed into service.” Stan leaned back, letting his arms drape over the seatback. “Can’t even remember the last time I had a weekend to just goof off.”

Ford took a sip of coffee to cover his concern.

Stan’s memory had come back strong enough, but there were...holes. And it was Ford’s chief fear that the holes would grow bigger as time went on.

“I figured we would start with the ones in the house,” Ford said, breaking the toast in half and scraping a piece along the butter dish. “Work our way outwards.”

“Ugh. This is a little too close to spring cleaning for my comfort.”

“Don’t think of it like that, think of it like…” Ford struggled to find an analogue that would interest his brother. “think of it like a game of 3-card monte. You have to eliminate the wrong cards to find the one you want.”

“That is in no way, shape, or form what 3-card monte is.” Stan took a noisy slurp and set his mug down. “Alright, I'll do it. Just make sure you don’t wreck my stuff in the process.”

“Stan, some of your so-called stuff is actually my stuff with googly eyes slapped on.”

“So?” Stan picked up a nearby object.  _ “‘Hallo, I'm Mr. Deely-bopper! I've got craaaaaaaazy eyes!” _

Ford smothered a laugh with his hand. “You’re so immature.”

_ “‘Aww, Stanford, why you no like meeeee?’” _

Ford batted it away from his face, chuckling. “And stop doing that voice. It’s annoying.”

“Not as annoying as your face!”

“So  _ your  _ face, then?”

Stan paused. “Damn. I hadn’t thought about that.”

Ford shook his head fondly, taking a sip of coffee.

“So I've drawn up an itinerary of things to do. As you’ll see here, I've got it planned out in stages, which will widen into an increasing radius—”

Stan snorted. “C’mon, we both know how this’ll end. We’ll run afoul of some scifi stuff and I'll wind up pointing a gun at you and some shape-copying alien and we’ll do that whole,  _ ‘shoot him,’ ‘no, shoot him, he’s the evil one,’  _ spiel.”

Ford gave him a look. 

“Tell me I'm wrong.”

Ford shook his head again and scribbled something more on the clipboard.

 

Thy started with the little things, those that were small enough to be carried or fit in a box.

Stan pulled out a ball studded with buttons. “Thingy.”

“Omnidirectional flash grenade. Government didn’t pick up the patent because it was ‘just a glorified disco ball.’” Ford ticked a box on his clipboard and set the ball aside.

Stan retrieved a small remote. “Whatchacallit.”

“Pan-universal remote. I guess being able to control your alternate self’s television just didn’t  _ wow  _ investors.” Ford set it on the ground and hit it with the magnet gun. The innards tore themselves apart.

Ford lifted a tie from the box by the point of his mechanical pencil. “Mind-control tie. Commissioned to—”

“Die!” Stan snatched the neckwear and stomped it into the dust. 

Ford stared at the display. His hand automatically ticked off a box.

Stan wheeled the copy machine out from the office. “Dunno why you don’t want this thing around. It’s handy.”

“Stanley, it creates sentient copies of whatever you put on the photo bed.”

“So? We’d never run out of food!” Stan laid a Pitt cola on the machine. It obligingly spit out a paper copy that widened into a 3-dimensional can. Stan cracked it open and took a swig. He made a face. “Ugh! Tastes like toner.”

“Stanley, stop messing around with the matter simulacra  scanner.” Ford prodded the side of the copier with his magnet gun. “I'm going to need some better equipment. Wait here.”

Ford went into the house and got his case of photoventric tools. Stan met him coming out the door.

“Hey, ah...there wouldn’t be, like, a heavy-duty fly swatter in there?”

Ford glared at him.

“What? I didn’t do nothing!”

“That’s technically correct. You didn’t do  _ nothing _ Stanley, you did  _ something. _ What did you do?”

Stan looked shifty. “Hey, you’re the one who made the broken machine. I can’t—”

Something screeched in the trees. Ford dropped his tools in horror. “You didn’t!”

Stan shuffled his feet. “...okay, look, mayyyybe I tried to copy some money. Just to see. But that doesn’t mean—”

“Get down!” Ford hit the deck, arm over his brother, as a dollar flew screeching from the treeline. The money flew screeching around their heads in a circle.

“Okay, you go to the kitchen and get the two biggest saucepans. I'll lure it with some pocket change and we’ll trap it until we can incinerate it.”

“Ah, good….and what do you want to do about the others?”

Ford gave him a blank look. “You put  _ more  _ money in the machine?”

“Well, the first one didn’t work, so I thought bigger denominations would settle his hash.” Stan chuckled. “Hindsight’s 50/50, eh Ford?”

Ford had buried his face in his hands. “I can’t believe this is happening. The first day of decommission and everything goes wrong.”

“Hey, c’mon now, everything hasn’t gone wrong.” Stan thought for a moment. “At least the house isn’t on fire?”

“Give it time.” Ford straightened up. He had bits of grass and a pine needle stuck to his face. “Okay. change of plan. I'm going to sneak down to the lab and throw together something to take care of them. Meanwhile, you distract them so they don’t escape.”

“Why me?”

Ford looked at him.

“Okay, that’s fair I guess.”

“So we break on three, okay?”

The brothers counted in time.

“One…

Two…

Thr—”

The sprinklers hissed to life, soaking the money-bats so that they melted soggily into green puddles.

Soos walked around the side of the house. “Oh, sorry dude. Were you doing something on the lawn?”

Ford put a hand on his forehead. “Nothing, Jesús. Thank you.”

 

The two brothers walked together at the supermarket, pushing a cart filled with odds and ends. Stan threw a bag of marshmallows in. Ford plucked it back out again.

“Aw, c’mon! We have to bring marshmallows at least! Why go camping if you can’t make s'mores?”

“Stanley, we’re not camping. We’re on a recovery mission. It just so happens that we’ll have to be out overnight.”

Stan rolled his eyes.

“Oh, very well.” Ford sighed and tossed the marshmallows back in the basket. Then he covertly added chocolate and graham crackers while Stan was looking at a video display.

“It’s time to get serious, Stanley. Do you want to leave the Falls and go exploring around the world?”

Stan put down  _ Grandpa the Kid II: For a Few Dentures More.  _ “You know I do.”

“Well then we have to work quickly and methodically. Less thistle-blowing and skylarking.”

“You been hanging out with McGucket too much, he’s starting to rub off on you.”

Ford made a face. He had a point, come to think of it.

Stan turned around with a maniacal grin. “Before we go out, why don’t we have a twin night? I've found some movies about twins!” In his hands, he held  _ Dead Ringers, Basket Case,  _ and  _ The Other. _

Ford looked at his watch. Then he looked down at the candy in the basket. He sighed.

“I suppose.”


	2. Cows and Camping

Ford sipped from his left-handed mug as he went over the itinerary. He planned to hit the the woods next. The bunker he was saving for another day, when he could dedicate an entire day (which he knew he’d need) to it.

They’d accrued enough camping supplies to stay out for at least a few days. All that was left was to hit the road.

Ford tried the knob on the bathroom. “Stan,” he called, poking his head in,  “are you done shower—”

“ _Disco girl, comin’ through, that girl is you_!” Stan wailed atonally.

Ford clamped a hand to his mouth, tears condensing in the corners of his eyes. He ran through the house and out the back door, looking for the right spot. He barely made it over to the bottomless pit before a hurricane of laughter spilled forth from his gut. Ford fell to his hands and knees, guffawing so hard his glasses almost fell off.

Stan walked through the kitchen fifteen  minutes later, whistling. “Hey Sixer. Everything ready for our trip?”

Ford checked off a point. “Ready and rarin’ to go, Fiver. You’re sure Jesús can spare you for a day or two?”

“Nah, he’s mostly got it. I told him: when in doubt, add three zeroes.”

Ford nodded. “The family motto.”

He bent to tighten the laces on his hiking boots. Stan shouldered his pack. Both brothers set out into the great outdoors.

“You know, I never really got to appreciate the flora of Gravity Falls for its simple beauty,” Ford mused as they crossed the yard. “It seemed like I was only ever outside to study anomalies.”

Stan snorted. “Ya ain’t missing much. Seems like every other day, all I do is—”

As they passed by the bottomless pit, a sudden burst of laughter spilled out, echoing into the air. Stan locked eyes with Ford, who struggled to maintain a straight face. Eventually the laughter died down.

Stan shook his head at Ford. “Man...that hole just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

As they hiked past, Ford let out a breath of relief.

 

“...I'm hungry, I'm tired, and my big toe is blistering,” Stan chanted as they marched uphill.

Ford rolled his eyes.

“I’m achy, I'm hungry, and I have a bug bite on my—”

“Stanley,” Ford said in a diplomatic tone of voice, “why don’t you try focusing on the landscape around us instead of on your problems?”

“We’ve been out here so long I don’t even remember most of these trees.”

“It’s only been a half hour Stan.”

“Who cares?” Stan flung his arms wide, making the pans hanging from his pack clatter. “Why do we have to go so far out here? Can’t we just chuck everything down where we are and camp?”

Ford turned around and walked backward. “1: what I'm looking for is far off the beaten path. 2: we are currently hiking through a patch of brambles and poison oak. 3—”

Ford’s heel hit a rock and he went down. Stan regarded his prone body.

“So...do we camp?”

 

The brothers cleared out a neat 10-yard circle and unrolled their sleeping bags. Ford tried not to roll his eyes at each new item Stanley produced from his pack, but he had to draw the line at—

“A mirror helmet? Seriously?”

“In case we meet an eight-legged cow.” Stan returned Ford’s stare. “Hey. it’s more likely than you’d think.”

Ford shook his head, unpacking the wind-up lanterns, the self-cooking meal packets, and the interdimensional radio.

Stan upended his pack, and a girlie magazine fell out with the other debris. Ford’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

“Really, Stanley? _Bike Babes_?”

“Ey, it wouldn’t be a campout without reading material.”

Ford rolled it up. “I’m confiscating this.”

“What? No fair!”

Ford used the tube of the magazine as a pointer and prodded his brother in the chest. “I am **not** . Out here for **fun**. We are going to detain my experiment, neutralize it, and then head back.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Oh sure, Mr. Perfect has no room in his pack for _fun_.”

Ford shouted as Stan took his pack and shook it, “wait don’t—”

A _Scientific American_ rolled out and flopped onto the forest floor like a glossy leaf. The brothers locked gazes.

Ford held a tense finger out to his brother. “Not. One. Word.”

 

“... _chariots chariots. Greg tells me some of you are attempting to smuggle methane out of the test chambers in your containment suits. Now, I know methane is going for a good price on the black market, but I want to take this opportunity to remind you that this is not only illegal, it’s really, really dumb.”_

The brothers lay on their backs, looking up at the milky way, fire crackling as it died down to coals. The interdimensional radio sat between them.

“ _Now, those of you who haven’t been assigned to haul away your methane-poisoned companions will notice a little something in this next test room. The mantis men hav—”_

Ford snapped the radio off. He’d already removed his glasses and had his hands folded peacefully on his breast. Stan still had his specs on, arms laid out flat above his head. He was looking up at the stars with a look of frightened awe.

“Ford,” he said. It was its own statement, not preamble to anything else. Still Ford felt compelled to answer.

“Stan?”

A knot popped in the fire pit.

“Ford,” Stan said again, “was it lonely? When...when you were gone?”

Ford chewed the inside of his cheek. How much did Stan really remember? He’d only briefly touched on his time away, meaning to fill in more details later but he’d been understandably distracted.

He summed it up the best way he could: “lonely.”

“Oh.” Then: “same here.”

The brothers lay side by side in their bags. Their mother had always joked about them having low-grade telepathy, how they could always talk without really speaking. Whatever their level of extra-sensory perception, they spoke with the comfortable silence between them, the silence that said nothing else really needed to be said. When they fell asleep, they slipped under at nearly the same moment, Stan not remembering to remove his black frames before he was unconscious. When they dreamed, if it was not the same dream it was something similar.

 

Ford was awoken by a shaft of sunlight touching directly over his right eye. He squinted irritably as he donned his glasses and sat up.

The early-morning sunlight just barely pierced the canopy above them, illuminating the green so that it glowed with unearthly light. Ford, face up, touched his brother’s arm.

“Stan—” he began.

Stan was still out, mouth ajar, arm slung across his chest. Sleep had taken the years off of him, so that he looked a young man again. Ford withdrew his hand, then oh-so-gently swept it across Stan’s hair. Stan made a small noise with his nose that wasn’t quite a whimper. Ford smiled and got up as quietly as possible.

 

Stan snorted and rolled over as Ford scrambled powdered eggs and preserved Jercon(the jerky bacon!) in the pan.

“Boy, how long was I out?”

“A small ice age.” Ford was smiling this morning. He was way off schedule, hours behind his projected end time. Why was he so happy?

Stan hocked and spat, hitting a passing gnome. Oh, right.

Ford shoveled the grub onto a tin plate for Stan and ate his portion straight from the pan. Stan tugged his sleeping bag around his shoulders against the morning chill.

“So what are we looking for out here?”

Ford sipped a cup of instant coffee which tasted almost but not quite as good as the water from the muddy puddle near their campsite. “Something I had to abandon because of...reasons.”

“Why are we just waiting out here with our thumbs up our kazoos, then? Let’s go!”

Stan stood up, his stiff, courageous pose only slightly detracted by the fact that he was still wearing his sleeping bag.

“Stanley, your incentive is admirable, but this invention is only attracted to...helplessness. It was a failed attempt at tracking the Hidebehind, but instead of going after something that doesn’t want to be found, it goes after those that have lost themselves..”

“So what, it’s some kind of Blair Witch deely?”

Ford chewed on that question for a while. “Sure. Why not?”

They marched through the sun-dappled forest. Probably the biggest miracle of that morning was that Stanley had stopped complaining.

“I was just thinking. That radio guy from last night; didn’t he kind of sound like you?”

“Did he?” Ford contemplated it. “I thought he sounded like kind of a blowhard.”

Branches swayed gently not too far away. Someone without acutely trained senses might have written it off. Ford pretended to ponder their trail as his eardrums honed in on the source of the sound.

Stan locked eyes with him. Ford tried to communicate without speaking, using his gaze to indicate the danger they were in.

Stan furrowed his brow and held up a power bar.

Ford rolled his eyes.

When it broke upon them, it broke so suddenly that neither brother was prepared. Ford’s pack was snagged on a nearby branch. He spun around and fell down. He managed to recover enough to grab Stan’s hand. Stan had been laid out on his back in a bramble patch. Ford pulled him and the pack free with a ripping sound.

“Run!” he gasped. “Don’t look—run!”

Both brothers ran through the underbrush, ornery branched whipping them in the face and other unprotected areas. They stumbled upon a clearing where an oddly shaped deer grazed from a bush. Stan tripped, taking Ford down with him this time. Branches cracked and splintered behind them.

The deer at the other end of the clearing raised its head. It was most definitely not a deer on second glance, as no deer Ford had ever seen had so many extraneous limbs growing out its back.

The thing behind Stan and Ford bellowed.

The cow looked up benignly. Its eyes glowed, a split-second warning before two beams sizzled from its eyes into the creature. In a flash, it was ash.

The brothers gaped at the scene, blinking in unison.

The cow went back to peacefully grazing.

“Told ya,” Stan said sagely.

 

Back at the house, Ford picked thorns from his socks. It almost seemed a shame to come back so soon, but time was waning. He wanted to be out and on the sea before winter properly started. He hadn’t even gotten a boat, nor had he had time to check out nautical charts…

Ford eyed a particularly nasty thorn and sighed.

He almost didn’t want to admit it, but...it was hard to go. This place had been his home longer than New Jersey, longer than Backupsmore, longer than anywhere else. And he was only just really getting to know Stanley, starting fresh after so many years—

“...de nada. Salude a tu familia, Carlos.”

Ford crept down the hall. Stanley was talking. To who?

Stan turned around as Ford entered the kitchen. The phone sat innocently on the hook.

Ford tread with caution. “Stan? Who were you talking to?”

Stan quirked his brow. “...talking? Was I talking?”

He really did look like he didn't know what Ford was talking about.

Ford tried to quell the awful feeling that had risen in his gut as he took his brother by the shoulders.

“Hey,” he said in a gentle voice, “you want to watch a movie?”

Stan grinned, all trace of uncertainty gone. “Heck yeah! Twin night!”

Ford grimaced. “Look, if we’re going to have another twin night, can you pick something less creepy?”

Stan held up _How The West Was Fun._

“I said _less_ creepy.”


	3. Carpets and Correspondance

 

_Dear Great-uncle Ford,_

_Wow, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since we left Gravity Falls. Piedmont is...kinda boring, I have to admit. Nothing like Weirdmageddon to put things in perspective._

_Mabel loves the sweater machine you made her. It made this weird sweater hydra when she accidentally left it on overnight, but she loved it. Called it her “friend sweater.” I saw her and some other girls from our class walk around during recess like some kind of knitted octopus. It’s crazy._

_Ford, I have to ask…_

_How do you do it? How do you come back down after something so amazing? I’m surrounded by kids who never knew the world was on the verge of collapsing. The biggest thing they have to worry about is the dumb fall dance. It’s hard to connect with people like that._

_Any advice?_

_Your Grephew,  
_ _Mason (Dipper) Pines_

 

Ford smiled at the letter. A folded-up drawing included in the envelope depicted the sweater hydra, Mabel grinning like a pirate at its center.

He walked into the attic holding the letter.

“Stanley, the kids just—”

The bottoms of his feet tingled.

Ford stopped.

Past his boots, he spied a horribly familiar blue.

“Stanley,” he said carefully, “is this the carpet from my old room?”

Stan came around a pile of boxes topped by a stuffed moose head. He was carrying an armful of taxidermied animal parts.

“Oh that thing? Yeah, the kids wanted to throw it out, but I thought: why waste a perfectly good carpet?”

Ford’s eyes were glued to his feet.

Very calmly, he said, “Stan. Without walking over this carpet, I want you to go down to my lab and get the static diffuser from the forty-seventh drawer on the right. Then I want you to—”

“Pfft.” Stan rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows the quickest way between two points is the patented Stan Pines Shuffle.” He started across, dragging his felt-bottom slippers as he walked.

“No, Stanley!” Against his better judgement, Ford stepped forward to get him. Stan nimbly dodged his grasp. Ford tried to snag his brother’s arm and missed, dragging another step.

Too late, he felt a blinding tingle throughout his body.

“Stan—”

“—ley.” he finished, dropping his armful of animal bits to reach out.

Ford’s own body stood before him.

“Wow,” said Stan-in-Ford.

Ford-in-Stan tried not to panic. “Stanley, we need to build up enough static electricity so we can switch back. Then I am going to melt this carpet into a polyester meteorite.”

An unsavory grin was spreading across Stan-in-Ford’s face.

“Whooaa no,” he said, backing away, “I kinda like this body. Think I'll stay here for a bit.”

“It’s not yours!”

Stan jogged over to the dusty mirror leaning against the attic wall. “Imma take this opportunity to find out why you wear this stupid turtleneck, too.”

“Wait, Stanley, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

Stan pulled down the turtleneck’s collar, revealing a small tattoo of a cartoon star giving a thumbs up. Startled, Stan looked back at Ford.

Ford frowned. “Hey. You don’t get to judge me.”

Weirded out, Stan let go of the collar. His hand dropped to his waist and brushed against the magnet gun in its holster.

Stan’s eyes lit up with unwholesome light as Ford’s popped wide in horror.

“Stanley,” he said in his I-will-kick-you-so-hard-you’ll-see-stars-in-another-dimension voice, “don’t.”

Stan flicked the magnet gun from its holster like a cowboy and fired it five times in rapid succession. A handful of metal odd and ends, candlesticks and napkin rings, came flying out of storage boxes. Ford had to duck as they sailed past him.

Stan hooted. “Man, this thing is a blast!”

Ford snagged a commemorative plate and flung it, frisbee-style, at his brother’s hand. Stan yelped and dropped the gun, rubbing the bruise.

Ford rolled and recovered the gun, wincing as unfamiliar aches made themselves known. Stan looked at the space where the gun used to be, then up at Ford. He frowned.

“Okay,” he said, stepping sideways and snagging a weathervane, “you wanna dance?”

“Sorry.” Ford knocked it out of his hand with one shot. “Not quite my tempo.”

Stan rubbed the other hand, frowning. Then a bolt of inspiration flashed across his face. Ford did not like the look of it, not one bit.

“Fine,” Stan said, edging towards the door, “I'm just going to visit my good friend McGucket.”

“Stanley,” Ford said, “don’t do anything we’re going to regret, now.”

Stan broke for the door. Ford fired, just missing his head and sending a picture frame hurtling.

“You come back here, Stanley,” Ford bellowed, “you come back here and shuffle this carpet right now!”

The chase was painful. Stanley was not in as good shape as Ford was, and the slippers were cumbersome. Ford ditched them, running barefoot down the stairs.

Stanley was already outside, barging past Soos carrying a Jackelopacorn. Ford was in hot pursuit.

“Soos, I give you a 2000% raise and the title to my crappy little car,” Ford shouted as he ran past.

“What?” Stan slowed for a moment. “That’s it. I’m going to find McGucket and tell him I've been having an affair with that dumb raccoon.”

“Do it and you’re dead!” Ford’s feet quickly grew sore from running over the gravel road, but he kept running.

“Science sucks!” Stan yelled at a passing group of teenagers. They looked at each other and collectively shrugged.

“I pay my taxes in monopoly money!” Ford shouted at the sheriff and deputy, who didn’t even look up from braiding a flower garland.

“I got ‘em and then let ‘em go!” Stan shouted at the mayor. Cutebiker tore his shirt down the middle.

“I’m a terrible boss and I skim from the till!” Ford shouted at a passing Wendy Corduroy.

She rolled her eyes. “Dude, I already know that.”

“I’m the cause of global warming!”

“I stole the bulbs in all the traffic lights and sold them back at cost!”

“I’m a lousy know-it-all who still doesn’t know how to talk to girls!”

“I’m a shiftless leech who profits off the labors of others!”

They wound up at the diner. Lazy Susan was walking up to the door, keys in hand.

Stan stopped in front of the diner, panting. “Hey. * _puff_ * I secretly find you cute. * _huff_ * I think your weird eye and my weird hands go together.”

Ford wheezed as he ran up, holding onto his side.

“I think you’re cute too,” he gasped, “but I don’t know how to express affection and just come across as a jerk.”

Susan blinked her good eye. Then she blushed.

“Well, aren’t you boys just the cat’s pajamas?” she gushed.

Susan twiddled the strap to her apron. “To tell you the truth, I think you two are pretty cute too.”

She bent forward and lowered her voice, “and I have to say, today’s special might be maple-smoked waffles, but I wouldn’t mind a Pines sandwich, _ifyaknowwhatImean_.”

She lifted her lazy lid with her hand and then dropped it. “Wink,” she said.

The brothers stood, frozen, as she giggled raunchily and went into the diner.

“Am I—”  Ford stammered. “did she just—”

“We should go, Stan said quietly.

The two brothers limped back the way they came.

As they neared the turnoff for the Mystery Shack, Ford looked over at Stan.

“Are we just going to ignore the elephant in the room?”

“Hey! Susan’s no model, but that’s taking it a little too far.”

Ford looked at him, fuming. “No. Not that. I meant the carpet thing.”

“Oh.” Stan shrugged. “I dunno. Let it air out a little, maybe spot wash it? Good as new.”

He strode on, oblivious to Ford’s glare.

“Why would you even want to keep it,” Ford asked, “so you can pretend to be me?”

“Yeah? And why not?” Stan wrapped Ford’s arms around his body. “At least this way you wouldn’t be able to leave me again.”

Ford didn’t answer. His head was suddenly swimming.

“I used to do that,” Stan said. His eyes were unfocused. He’d gone somewhere inside himself. “I’d take off my glasses and talk to the mirror. Pretend it was you. Only got easier as my eyesight got worse.”

One lone thought emerged from the turbulent waters of Ford’s mind.

“Left you?” he asked.

“Yeah. You left me to go traipsing across dimensions. I mean, I probably deserved it, but—”

“Stanley I didn’t leave you,” Ford interrupted, “not on purpose, anyway.”

“Oh.” Stanley looked thoughtful. “Then what happened?”

Ford thought of an ill-timed shove, thirty-year regret. “It was an accident.”

Stan looked at him. “Really? ...gosh, Ford, I am so sorry. I’ve been a total Crampelter.”

Ford waved it away. They were coming up to the Mystery Shack again.

“Look, a lot of bad things happened,” he said, “but also...good things. More good than bad. We should focus on them, because....”

The Mystery Shack was orange in the light of the sinking sun. The triangular window gleamed like a lighthouse beacon calling them back.

“...because the bad things aren’t really important in the grand scheme of things,” Stan said slowly, “they’re louder, they clamor for attention, but in the end they only mean what you think they mean.”

Ford looked at him with raised eyebrows. “That was quite...sage, Stanley.”

Stan blushed and tossed a shoulder. “Aw, c’mon.”

Ford adjusted Stan’s glasses. “We should get up there and back in our bodies. It’s nearing six o’clock and I don’t know where you keep the cooking utensils.”

“Can’t we stay like this for a little longer?” The mischievous gleam was back in Stan’s eye. “Just until you lose my gut?”

Ford slugged his own arm. “Back to the attic with you, Fiver.”

 

Ford sat at his desk that evening, a mug of hot chocolate and a small ramekin of jellybeans at his side.

_Dear Mason,_ he wrote.

_My only advice to you? Cherish the everyday things. They are what will give you strength during the times you need it most. Remember that this is what you fought for when you fought the forces of darkness._

_Do you know what I dreamt of as I was wandering dimensions? Simple things. A mug of good cocoa_ [he took a sip right here] _Writing the first letter on a brand-new sheet of paper. My family._

_I must impart to you, monozygote to dizygote, there is something amazing in every moment of your life. While big events may shape it, it’s the everyday stuff that gives it form._

_Give your sister a kiss, and pat yourself on the back for me._

_Your grunkle,  
_ _(Stan)Ford Pines_

“You ready?” he asked, turning.

“Almost—almost—there.” Stan held up an origami pig. It had several sides sticking out funny and was almost fat as a real pig. But Ford took it and crammed it in the envelope nonetheless.

Ford sealed the letter with a satisfied nod, and then turned to Stan.

“That takes care of almost everything. Now, did you do what I asked you?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah. That rug is toast.” Stan took a sip of Pitt Cola.

“So you incinerated it?”

“Nah, I crammed it in the dumpster behind Dusk 2 Dawn.” He noticed the look Ford was giving him. “What? The only people who go there are bored teens, and everybody knows they don’t like messing around with mysterious objects.”

Ford was shaking his head. “At least tell me you hid it behind something.”

“Um, yeah.” Stan looked shifty. “It’s behind a big sign that says ‘free.’”

Ford sighed. “Time to saddle up the incinerator beam.”

“Can it wait a minute? I gotta get on shoes. My feet hurt for some reason.”


	4. Boredom and Board Games: Part 1

Rain drummed on the roof of the Mystery Shack. Stan's fingers drummed on the table of the Mystery Shack. He had gone through the Star Spangled Banner, a few Beethoven songs, and now was stuck on Mars: Bringer of War.

Ford was tinkering with the interdimensional radio. He had taken a crystal out of the speaker and set it aside.

“Come on Ford,” Stan said, “I'm bored. Can we play a game or something?”

“Stanley I really don't have time for one of your games,” Ford said as he lifted up a soldering iron.

“Come on, it's a perfect kind of day to play a board game." Stanley went to the closet and started rooting through boxes. “look, I got _Cards Against Inanity. Cripple Mr. Onion. Parsneezy?”_

Ford used a set of tweezers to lower a diode down slowly….slowly...ever so slowly….

His twins’s face suddenly popped into view at table-height.

_“Don’t Wake Stalin!”_ Stan screamed.

Ford yelped and flung his arms up. Both of them heard the tink of the diode suddenly landing somewhere in the cluttered house behind them.

Ford, arms still up, glared down at Stanley. Stanley was giving him one of his patented cheesy grins.

“Looks like someone’s done fixing the radio, heh, heh,” he said nervously.

Ford rolled his eyes and fished another diode from the box. “Stan, there’s nothing wrong with the radio. I’m trying to boost its signal so that I can pull in a wider radius of universes.”

“Why, so you can talk to your space-girlfriend?”

Ford reddened. “Wha—I don’t have to sit here and take this!”

“Good. You should stand over here and take this.” Stan pushed the box into Ford’s hands.

Ford looked down and rolled his eyes. Then he looked at the radio, guts spilled out over the table like an autopsy. Then out at the steel-grey skies of Gravity Falls.

“Oh all right,” he said, getting off his stool, “but we need to pick something else. Something that requires strategy.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Jeez, fine. when did you become Mr. Anti-fun?”

Ford bit back _when you almost died, you dingus_ and instead shuffled through the boxes in the closet.

“Hey, the gateway game to _Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons,”_ he said, holding up the box to _Mazes and Slightly More Mazes_. Stan squinted.

“I dunno. Isn’t that the one with an awful lot of satan all over the place?”

“What? That’s just silly.” Ford flipped the box, which bore a pattern plucked straight from _The Lesser Key of Solomon_ , and quickly went after another one. “Hey! _Date Night: pick your dreamboat and set sail for love_ ….” he lowered the box. “I thought we sent this back with Mabel.”

“We did. She bought five copies.” Stan was looking at a box, squinting over his glasses. “What about this?”

Ford took the box. _Cryptkeeper’s Walk. Explore the graveyard after dark, shepherded by the malevolent cryptkeeper. Pick one of five characters and use your Destiny and Happenstance cards to get to the cryptkeeper’s lair._

Ford lowered the box. “Does it come with a dice?”

“It comes with five!”  Stan upended the box. “Also...a VHS tape?”

Ford read the back. “It looks like we have to put this in while we play.” He looked up. “How fun! A multimedia game.”

Stan dragged out his video player. Ford eyed the silver monstrosity, which took up the entire coffee table.

“Stan, what is that made of?”

“Stainless steel. Built to last, not like these namby-pamby DDV players.” Stan stroked its surface in a slightly disturbing manner. “Built in 1978, by a company that doesn’t appear to exist anymore. It can take a sledgehammer blow and still work...though it does eat one out of every three tapes….and your fingers if you’re not careful.”

“Um, Stan, should we really—”

“Oh, hang on, the tape’s not all the way to the beginning.” Stan hit a button. With a sound like demons going through a garbage disposal, the tape rewound.

The deck did not have an RCA cable. It had a series of cables that Stan had jury-rigged into one cable that plugged into the tv. Everything sparked dangerously as Stan scooted on his butt over to where Ford sat.

The tv made a magnetic sound and nothing happened.

“So what happens? Do we pick our character?”

Stan frowned at the plastic figures, “I think we—”

“SILUUUUUNCE,” the cryptkeeper shouted as he appeared suddenly on screen. He wore all the halloween finery of the nearest dollar store, and spoke in an accent that was a strange hybrid between Scottish and French. “Yuuuuu graveyard grubs will be discipluuuunnned for not wetting your turrrrrrn.”

The brothers blinked.

“Nnnnnow, whuich one of yuuu is the ullllldessst?”

The brothers blinked. Ford tentatively raised a hand.

“Yuuuu willl roll the die of destiny! This wullll telll yuuuu your crypt number.”

Ford took a look at the dice in the game box. There was no discernible difference between the five.

“Your crypt number wulllll influence the numburrr of graveyard grips yuuuu wulllll inherit. Write duwn your age and divide it by your crypt number.”

Ford fumbled in the box. “Is there a pencil—”

“Now, tek that numberrrr and apply it to the Destiny book. If you were burrrn in the months listed on the right side of the chart—”

“Hang on—”

“—take the putrefaction die. For every odd numberrrr, yuuuu will take a purple square—”

“Can you pause this?” Ford asked as he fumbled beneath the couch.

“Sorry. I don’t even think it has a stop button. The guy who sold it to me said, ‘it’ll be done when it’s done.’” Stan said, hand rooting in the snack bowl.

Ford came up with a colored pencil.

With a broken point.

“Now, the graveyard grub with the highest happenstance equation—”

“Why don’t I just go first?’ Ford snapped.

Stan scoffing chipackers, shrugged.

The videotape entered a lull. They each picked one of the plastic figures and put them on the board. Ford squinted at the instructions, then down at the game.

“So...do we move when we roll the dice or when we spin the spinner?”

“I think we have to wait for the guy.”

The brothers sat. Ford tapped his fingers on the table in a slightly more complex rhythm than Stan’s. The clock ticked. Stan shoved another handful of chipackers in his mouth.

“Should we—”

“SILUUUUUUNCE!” the cryptkeeper appeared on screen with an accompanying thunderclap. Both brothers started, Stan pressing a hand to his heart.

“The graveyard grub who hus landed on a mausoleum wull be sent to the punishment pit.”

Ford frowned. “Mauso...which square?”

“If thet graveyard grub cannot roll his own phone numberrrr on the ancestry die, he wull move to the peril pit until such time as I deem him worthy agenn.”

Ford squinted at the TV. “Wait..what?”

The cryptkeeper disappeared again.

Ford looked through the box, shaking his head. “This doesn’t seem—”

“SILUUUNCE!!”

Ford shouted and threw the box in the air.

“Anyone on the mourning squahre must draw from the happenstance deck, blow thrrrrice on the card, and then pass it to their left.” The cryptkeeper disappeared again.

Ford looked down, scratching his head. “I think—

“SILUUUUUNCE!”

Ford made fists, his brow forming a dark line across his forehead. Stan kept shoving snacks in his mouth, gaze bouncing between the television and Ford.

“The graveyard grub carrying my funeral wreath must lay it on the monument square in six turns. Or else!”

Ford waited, quietly, until the cryptkeeper left the screen again. The TV was dark. Ford raised an eyebrow. The screen was still dark.

Ford sighed. “Maybe—”

“SILUUUUUUNCE!”

“OH HOT BELGIAN WAFFLES!” Ford snarled, upending the board.

Stan leaned back, cheek working as he chewed. “S’matter, Ford?”

“This game makes no freaking sense! It’s like trying to play a tax return!” Ford took the cards and slammed them back into the box.

“I thought you liked difficult games.”

“I like games with _logic!_ This is just a heap of convoluted nonsense! I’d have more fun playing checkers with a chimp!”

Stan wiped his crumby hand on the seat of his pants. “Hey, you miss your nerd games, I get it. Maybe you’ll like it if we play with this?”

Ford knew, before he laid eyes on it,exactly what it was. It felt like he was moving in slow motion as he turned and watched Stan open a familiar box and catch the edge on his sleeve, sending the infinity-sided die tumbling to the table.

Ford met Stan’s sheepish gaze with a glare as the die flashed through a series of symbols before settling on an ankh.

“How did you get that from a locked cabinet?”

“Gee, no wonder it was so hard to open?” Stan grinned, running a hand through the hair in the back of his head. Ford’s mouth was a stern, disapproving line.

“What? All I have to do is roll a six and we’re back to real life, right?’

Ford put his head in his hands.

“Mr. Pineses? Are you in here?” Soos poked his head into the room.

“Soos! Quickly, get—”

The walls of the shack blurred, and then disappeared. The shag carpeting transformed into dead grass. The TV a tombstone. Fog crept over their ankles.

Ford glared at Stan.

“Um...ooops?”

Soos was spinning around, gazing in awe.

“Wow! It’s like I'm really in Cryptkeeper’s Walk!”

“You play this game? Ford asked.

“Yeah, all the time! It reminds me of when my abuelita would go gravedigging with her Santeria club.”

Soos looked joyfully around as the brothers exchanged looks.

“It looks like we’re stuck playing this game until such time as we win.” Ford furrowed his brow. “If you _can_ win a game like this, anyway.’

“Here, it’s my turn.” Stan reached for the dice.

Ford slapped his hand away. He scooped the infinity-sided die back into the box.

“Does anyone have an inkling what we should do next?”

“Oh sure, Ford dude.” Soos counted off on his fingers. “Every move requires a counter-clockwise spin of the wheel. The number you land on gets played against a roll of the dice. The bigger number goes on your happenstance tablet, unless they’re both even. In which case you’ll want to roll the putrefaction and penances dices…”

The brothers exchanged another look as Soos rambled on.

“We’re gonna need a bigger die,” Ford said.


	5. Boredom and Board Games: Part 2

“...so then you take the number you got from the putrefaction die and align it to your star chart. Then you take your star sign and apply it to your running mortification tally. Whatever number of tally marks you end up with determines your number of happenstance cards…”

Soos babbled on merrily, strolling down the broken cobblestone path. The brothers crept along behind him, huddling close together.

“Does he come with an off switch?” Ford hissed urgently to his twin.

“Sure. Hey Soos!” Stan shouted at the handyman.

“Yes, Mr. Pines #1?”

“What time is it?”

“It’s exactly 5:43, dawg.” Soos showed the digital face of his watch. “Now…” his face went blank. “What was I talking about?”

“You were done,” Stan said mildly.

“Oh, good. It feels like I've been talking forever. I am wore out from the floor out.” Soos continued his ambling, whistling and putting a spring in his steps.

Stan fell back, nodding satisfactorily. He caught Ford’s look. “What?”

“Why do you get to be Mr. Pines #1?”

“Come on, we can’t always go by birth order.” Stan seemed unnecessarily smug. Ford chewed his resentment down with a mouthful of dry chipackerz.

They had been walking along the path for quite some time. Ford had expected something more than stillness among tombstones. Even a cheap dimestore skeleton would be better than the fog relentlessly creeping over their feet. It was damp. And it made Ford’s socks tacky.

“So how exactly do we win this game? Do we defeat the cryptkeeper in an all-out battle? Outwit him in a game of strategy?”

“Well, no.” Soos chewed on his answer, along with a handful of gummy chairs. “You have to get a certain number of point on your incarnation card and have all six of the laurel wreaths once you reach the ossuary.” He paused. “Or just wait until the last ten minutes of the tape. If you have any exorcism cards left over by that point, he basically just hands you the keys to the cemetery gate.”

Ford rubbed his temples. “I knew we should’ve just played _Date Night.”_

“That one came with a vhs tape too, y’know.”

“I’d pick the fumbling advances of Chad Chaddington over this incoherency anyday.”

“SILUUUUUNCE!!!

A tombstone popped up in their path. Ford adjusted his glasses and read the inscription.

“Anyone without a laurel wreath must roll their zip code on the prosperity die. If you roll over the number, you have to start again.”

Ford pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. He peered to one side of the tombstone. All clear. He peered around the other side. All clear.

Ford turned back and motioned to his companions. They walked around the tombstone.

“Well...that was a letdown,” Stan said.

“I dunno about breaking the rules, Ford dude. I think that might carry, like, a penalty or something.”

“Who cares? This game wants to punish me? Bring it on.” Ford looked defiantly around.

There was only the rhythmic thuds of their footfalls.

Ford shook his head. “I think—”

_“Bleh!”_ an old hag leapt onto the path, shaking her head.

“Crapsakes, it’s the hand witch! Everybody, hide your paws!” Stan drew his hands inside his sleeves.

Ford glared at the hag. “Did you really just say ‘bleh’ at me?”

The hag looked a little ashamed. Soos nudged Ford’s shoulder.

“Dude, that’s the Hag of Holes. You have to complete her assigned task, or face the Pit of Peril!” Soos’s eyes were solemn.

“So? What do you have for me?” Ford said dryly.

The hag pointed a crooked finger at him. “Listen, foolish pilgrim, good and well: to proceed along this path, you must repeat my spell!”

The hag summoned a card from the depths of her robe, making Stan cover his eyes and shout. The card held the words “googly-moogly pickley doo.”

Ford raised his eyebrows. “I am not saying that.”

“Say it now, or meet your fate! The jaws of death shall...masticate?”

Ford stared at her. The hag squirmed.

“Rrrrrrrrreallly had to stretch for that rhyme, didn’t you?”

The hag’s mouth puckered.

Ford stepped around her, pushing her to the side. “Come on, Stanley. Nobody’s going to take your hands.”

Stan skipped around the hag, hands in his pockets. Soos followed, shooting her an apologetic look.

“Mr. Pines #2, I don’t think that was such a good thing to do. I don’t think this game likes it when you go against the rules.”

“It doesn’t like me? Fine. The feeling’s mutual.” Ford shot a gate before them, opening it with a clang. “I don’t suffer fools gladly. And this game is wall-to-wall foolishness. If the cryptkeeper wants a battle, he’ll get—”

“SILUUUUUNCE!!!”

Ford stopped, magnet gun in hand.

“You! Yes you, graveyard grub! Yuuuu wull be puneeeeeshed!”

Ford raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah, what’re you going to do? Take my cards? Make me do a stupid dance?”

With a sound of great finality, a massive stone slab fell between Ford, still on the path, and Stan, who had crept up to stand beside his brother.

“...Mr. Pines?”

Ford’s face drained of blood.

“Stan? Stanley?”

“Mr. Pines?”

Ford approached the slab, laying a hand on its surface. It was solid to the touch and taller than the both of them put together.

“No,” he said quietly.

“Mr. Pines?”

Ford patted the rock with the flat of his hand. It held. He hit it harder. It stung his palm.

Ford began beating at the rock, walloping it with all his force. He rammed it with his shoulder.

“No,” he said, “ _no!_ I just got him back!, I can’t lose him again!” He scrabbled at the rock surface.

“...ister Pines! Ford dude!” A strong force grabbed Ford from behind and dragged him from the rock. Ford realized he had been hearing an insistent buzz, and that the buzz had been Soos’s voice. The handyman hugged him from behind, rocking him gently.

“You gotta stop, dude. Look at your hands.”

Ford looked down at his shaking hands. The knuckles were bloody and peeling. He had dropped the magnet gun to beat futilely at the rock.

“Mr. Pines.” Soos spoke quietly and gently, which just made Ford feel worse. “I think he’s okay. But the only way to get him back  will be to play by the rules.”

Ford clenched his fists. The pain helped him focus.

“I’m going to get to the center of this thing,” he said in a calm voice that did not belong to him, “then I am going to jam this gun in that community-theatre Prospero’s mouth and pull his fillings out.”

Soos handed him the magnet gun and patted his back. Ford holstered the gun and set off in a brusque military march. Soos followed, wringing his hat.

A hooded figure burst onto the path. “Beware! Divide your phone number with your age times three, and you will—”

“Eleven,” Ford said, punching him in the head without missing a step.

Soos caught up beside him. “Um, Ford dude, do you think that’s such a good idea?”

“Sure.” Ford was walking, eyes straight ahead.

A tombstone popped up, demanding the oldest player do a single action while standing on one foot. Ford kicked the tombstone over.

“Avaunt!” wailed a ghoul in rotted gauze, “whichever—”

Ford put the magnet gun to its temple. “No. To whatever you were about to ask.”

The ghoul gulped. “Erm...exactly right!” It wisely scampered away.

They skipped through several obstacles in that fashion. After a while the graveyard residents stopped coming out.

This may have had something to do with the look of sheer murder in the eyes of Stanford Filbrick Pines.

At last they reached an ornate gate with a looming monument beyond.

“Hey, we’ve reached the cryptkeeper’s lair. Now we should make sure we have—”

Ford kicked the gate open with a clang and strode forward. “Stanley? Stanley, are you there?”

“Yeah. I'm in a pit or somethin’.” Stan’s words echoed up from a rectangular hole at the foot of the monument.

Ford knelt by the opening. “How is it?”

“It sucks. Like everything else in this game.”

Ford stood up. “Cryptkeeper! Come out! I challenge you!”

Fog poured from the monument’s mouth. From this stream of fog stepped the hooded figure of the cryptkeeper, doubly unimpressive in the flesh.

“You have rrrrrreched me, graveyard grub. I must applawd yuuuu.”

“Sorry, can’t clap, I only have one hand free,” Ford said, aiming the magnet gun at him.

“If yuuuu wish to challenge me, grub, you will need more than a tinker-toy to do so.”

“Well he’s not the only one!” Soos stepped forward, brandishing a plastic piece.

Ford put a hand to his forehead. “Soos, is that the tiny plastic shovel that came with the game?”

“Yeah! And with this, I'm gonna re-bury you.” Soos waved the plastic bit around.

“I can’t see. Are we doomed?” Stan grumbled in the pit.

“Not yet.” Ford focused on the hooded figure. “I hope you’re ready to die twice, you summer stock refugee.”

“Wait, Mr. Pines!” Soos scrambled in his pocket. “I grabbed the exorcism cards before we were sucked in here! All we have to do is wait for the last ten minutes, and we’re home like Jerome.”

Ford blinked. “That’s...surprisingly cunning of you, Soos.”

Soos blushed.

“Alll this willnaw halp you,” the cryptkeeper snarled. “Yoor  brother shall become a ghoul long before you can play a single cahrd!”

“Hey! I don’t look good in a dress! Trust me, I've tried.”

“No, _ghoul,_ ” Ford shouted into the hole, “undead. Revenant. Liche.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t want that, neither.”

“It’s okay Mr. Pines,” Soos shouted down the hole, “I'll save you!”

He flipped the cards uselessly at the cryptkeeper, who gave him a withering look. He produced a scythe taller than himself from empty air and cocked it back.

“Don’t even try it!” Ford shot the magnet gun. He missed the scythe. There was a distant clang.

“Yuuu have disobeyyyyyed meh,” the cryptkeeper snarled, “yuuu wull be puneeeshed!!”

Slicing through the fog like a silver locomotive, Stan’s tape player zoomed to the pull of the magnet gun. It hit the foot of the monument and stopped. Something in its innards ground against itself, generating a warning growl.

Ford gaped. Soos gaped. The cryptkeeper walked over and prodded it with his scythe.

There was a piercing mechanical shriek.

“I guess it’s done,” Stan said philosophically.

The tape deck cleared its throat. Then, with a sound like a thousand wailing cats scraping their claws over a blackboard, it began rewinding. A fold of the cryptkeeper’s robe that had fallen onto the surface was pulled inside.

As a horrified Soos and Ford looked on, the crypkeeper was dragged, shrieking, into the maw of the video behemoth. Ford covered Soos’s eyes with his hands as the tape deck spat out a steady fountain of magnetic tape, making a satisfied-sounding groan.

“I can’t see. Are we done?”

“Yeah,” Ford gulped. “We’re done.”

The scenery around them vanished. Ford and Soos were now stationed in front of the tv. Stan lay on his back beneath the coffee table.

“Wow, let’s never do that again,” Ford said, shuddering.

“I think I'm traumatized all over again. I need something to recover from this trauma-drama.” Soos took his cap off and ran a hand through his hair.

The three men exchanged a look.

 

“...the doorbell rings. It’s that local rake, Hunter Majors. He’s got his dad’s car keys and an armful of flowers. Do you trust him?” Soos wriggled his fingers.

“Heck no! He stood me up once, and that was one too many times!” Stan punched the table.

“Roll the rejection die. If you roll a six or higher, you can brag about dumping him to your friends.”

Stan tossed a pair of hot pink dice. “A seven! Woohoo!”

Ford crossed his arms. “I don’t get it. Why do you get all the hot guys?”

“Because you got all the dress cards. I’m stuck with this cheap thing.” Stan held up a card bearing a hideous pink frock scattered with bows.

Ford sighed. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

Stan reached for his pitt cola. “Well, at least you didn’t have to fend of the advances of—”

His sleeve caught on the box bearing the infinity-sided die, knocking the box on its side and unleashing the omnihedron. The men let out a simultaneous gasp as the dice rolled, symbols fluctuating rapidly.

The top face flashed through a number of symbols, slowing and finally stopping on a single number.

Eight.

Ford blinked. He checked the date booklet in front of him. He punched the air triumphantly.

“Woo hoo! Look who’s got a date with Drathan VanderVonSmithson!”

Stan hunched his shoulders. “No fair. I want a turn.”

Ford slapped his hand away and scooped the dice back in the box.

“I’m going to lock this thing back in the cabinet, and then I’m going to epoxy the door shut. There’s no telling what effect another roll of this die will have on our reality,” Ford lectured. The pieces of the interdimensional radio began hovering and glowing behind him. Stan, who had been about to take a sip of cola, gaped as the soda poured past his open mouth.

“...what with the random effect stat, every roll is a potential…”

“Erm, Ford?”

“...not even getting into quantum mechanics and trust me, you don’t want me to go there…”

“Ford dude?”

The radio reassembled itself in midair. The dialed tuned itself to the number 52, giving off eerie static noises.

The video on the TV entered another host segment. A blond, tan actor with a cleft in his chin appeared onscreen, high school letter jacket draped over his clearly-thirty-years-old physique.

“Hey, girl,” he said, dropping a wink. “It’s aboot time to get going on our date. Do you have all your dress cards? If you don’t, you’ll have to—”

The video player made a sound like a cougar in heat and ate the tape, vibrating so violently it began galloping across the floor to the three seated men.

The brothers shrieked, clasping onto one another. Soos fruitlessly flipped a handful of cards at the metal beast.

A glowing green disc opened above the radio on the table. A man with hair in radial points and a trickle of vomit leaking from one corner of his mouth stuck his head and one arm through. He shot the video player with a futuristic-looking laser gun.

Ford gaped. “Rick?”

“Hey man. Um. Long story short: I’m living at home with my grandkids and I’m an intergalactic fugitive.” He gave Ford an apathetic look. “Welp. Bye.”

“Wait!” Ford called as Rick ducked back through the portal, which closed almost immediately.

The radio dropped to the table, cracking and scattering pieces.

Stan looked around, finally turning to Ford. “The heck was that? Your space girlfriend?”

Ford looked shifty. “...kinda?”


	6. Pterodactyls and Ptomfoolery

Ford stood on the porch, cup of coffee in one hand, oak leaf in the other. He turned it over and over, studying it.

The leaf was of no particular note. It was not especially large or misshapen. It had no outstanding features, save for one: it was a blazing red orange.

Ford looked at it and felt time chafe at his collar. They needed to go. They needed a boat, and navigation equipment. They needed to make a plan for leaving.

Ford sighed and dropped the leaf. It tumbled end-over-end to lay in the damp brown grass.

He was dragging his feet. He could admit that now. It had been all well and good when he was clearing out the house of old inventions, that excuse had held for about a month. But what possible excuse could he have for doing nothing but get up, breakfast with Stan, and puttering around the house for the past few weeks?

Like a student before a trig test, Ford’s mental anchor had dropped and refused to be winched up again. The more he tried to force himself to work, the less he actually got done.

Ford sighed. Well, it was that time of the morning again. Time to go bug Stanley. Tesla knows he wasn’t getting much else done today.

As he rounded the corner of the house, Ford saw Stanley speaking to a handful of shady characters in the back of a truck. Ford stopped in his tracks, observing.

Stan appeared to be issuing orders. The leader, a hispanic man with a tigerstripe bandanna tied buccaneer-style on his head, knelt to shake hands with Stanley.

The truck drove away before Ford reached his brother. “Oh Stanley. Pug smuggling again?”

“Pug what?” Stan was squinting confusedly after the truck.. “What’re you talking about?”

Ford sighed. “What did they want?”

“What did who want?” Stan gave him a blank look. Ford shook his head.

“Look, Mabel sent us a package. I wanted you to be there when I open it.”

“Boy, I hope it’s fudge,” Stan said, following him to the house, “haven’t had good fudge since old man Fudge fell into that vat of caramel.”

The parcel was soft and tied in a lopsided bow. Ford took one strand, Stan took the other, and they pulled. The packaged unfolded like a leaf to display a square of knitted material. A note pinned to the square said “Grunkle sweater.”

Ford picked it up and shook it out. The sweater was grey mohair knit into a body wide enough to hold two people. The sweater had four sleeves, one pair stacked on top of the other. There was a big, pink heart in the center of the chest.

The brothers looked at the sweater, aghast.

“I have no idea what that is, but I have a feeling Lazy Susan would love it,” Stanley said.

 

The two brothers, minus the sweater, hiked up the road to the Northwest mansion.

“...so were those relatives of Soos?” Ford ventured.

Stan gave him a blank look.

“Nevermind.” he sighed. “Look, I know you’re not entirely fond of my friend—”

“It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that the last time I spoke to him he tried to eat my hat.”

“I realize that Fiddleford has his eccentricities. But I want to spend at least one day with him before we depart.”

“Speaking of: when will that be?” Stan gave him a surprisingly canny look. “You gotta disable some super-secret robot system or somethin’?”

“Something,” Ford agreed, hoping Stan wouldn’t pick up the indecision in his voice. He looked around for a change of subject.

The Northwest family huddled by the gate leading to the mansion, shivering even though fur coats.

“Buy a Magritte? Sir? I’ll take 5 million for it. 4 million if you throw in a yacht! Sir?” Preston Northwest grabbed at Ford’s lapels.

Ford shook him off.

“Pacifica.” He shot her a curt nod.

“Old guys.” She returned the nod in a nonchalant yet respectful fashion, all without looking up from filing her nails.

“Don’t ignore me, I used people like you for footstools once!” Preston waved his fist.

“Yeah, hey Northwest; what’s it like being related to a famous liar?” Stan called behind them as they went through the gate.

Ford pressed the doorbell. The first few notes of “dueling banjos” echoed within the mansion.

“Hew hew hew! I hope that’s my 3 o’clock!” McGucket opened the door, jigging happily.

“No, it’s just me, Fiddleford.” Ford gladly accepted a hug. “I wanted to visit for a bit.”

“Well come on in!” McGucket said in a near-shriek.

Stanley followed Ford into the mansion, squiggling a finger in his ear. “Man, do you have an inside voice?”

Ford elbowed him a little. “It’s good of you to see me like this, Fiddleford. I hope I'm not interrupting anything.”

“Shucks and shackles, you’re not interrupting anything!” McGucket led them to the main room of the mansion, where he had turned the many mounted animal heads into animatronics. “In fact I was just gittin’ ready to test out my new all-terrain veehickle!”

The animal heads on the wall launched into a disquieting fit of laughter, jaws flapping well after the programmed soundbyte died down. Stan hid behind Ford.

“That’s wonderful! Would you mind a ride-along?” Ford asked.

 

In the muddy wastes behind the Northwest mansion, a large lump lay under a tarp.

“I do sorta miss being at the town dump. I ain’t used ter having to order out fer parts.” McGucket threw off the tarp, revealing an all-terrain vehicle in the vague shape of a pterodactyl.

Stan got a strange look on his face. “It looks like…”

“Sure does!” McGucket slapped him on the back. “Just like those there thunder-lizards in that canyony-place!”

“Yeah.” Stan chuckled a little. “Hopefully this one won’t be stealing any pigs.”

For the first time ever, Stan and McGucket shared a laugh.

Ford wondered why he didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Hey, um, shall we get in?” His voice sounded too cheerful to his own ears.

“Sure! Just step into the gullet!” McGucket lowered the door, which became stairs. Ford let Stanley board first.

“I just want you to know, I'm glad you’re letting my brother come in on this,” he said to McGucket.

“Aw, _p’shaw_ and _psh_.  Stan and I go way back.” Again, Ford felt that uneasy feeling. “Just you get up there, Stanford Pines. Let’s get crackin’.”

Stan had already seated himself in a chair near some important-looking levers. Ford took the seat beside the console.

McGucket started the vehicle and they went down the steep hill the mansion sat upon, rotors chewing the mud as they descended.

“Figgerd we could go to the lake, test this puppy’s aquatic capabillies.”

Stan’s face got a flash of panic. “Um, not the lake, thanks. I just ate.” He paused. “Hey, how about we visit the dino place? I could punch a pterodactyl or two in the face.”

Again, friend and brother shared a laugh. Again, Ford was conflicted. What was wrong with him today?

The vehicle changed modes as they hit the forest, switching to large, spiked tires that obliterated everything in their path.

Stan slid around in his seat and grabbed onto a lever for support. A plume of fire shot out the nostrils of the pterodactyl head. Stan’s eyes lit up. McGucket made the _go ahead_ gesture.

Stan pulled the flamethrower again, letting out a hoot. A few eyebats, fleeing their disturbed tree, dropped to the ground extra-crispy style.

Ford eyed the two of them with concern.

They finally came upon a chapel that looked abandoned since pioneer times. With a roar, the vehicle tore through what was left of the wall, barreling straight towards a depression in the floor. Without even slowing, the vehicle switched from horizontal to vertical, spikes digging securely into the crevice wall.

Ford hadn’t secured his seatbelt yet, and so fell forward and hit his head on the dash.

“Whoops! Sorry Ford, guess it’s been awhile since you’ve been on an adventure.”

“I’m fine, I'm fine.” Ford rubbed his head, trying to fix his glasses. Another bump sent them flying. “Son of a—”

“Ford, just get back in your seat. We can worry about the glasses later.” Stan remained infuriatingly unmussed in his seat.

Ford waited until they rolled to the canyon floor to push off from the control panel. He scrabbled around his feet until he felt the familiar shape. He put the glasses back on his nose.

Cracked. Of course.

Stan now had his arm hanging casually out the window. “Man, this place is still the same. Stinky, humid, and filled with homicidal beasts. A bit like Florida, come to think of it.” He swatted a mosquito the size of a cat. “Scratch that. Exactly like Florida.”

“An entire lost world beneath Gravity Falls? Fascinating.” Ford uselessly adjusted his glasses. “I suppose the dinosaurs were preserved—”

“In sap. Yeah yeah yeah, we’ve been through this once already.”

“I ate my way out of a dinosaur!” McGucket crowed.

Both brothers found something else to look at.

“Is there a chance we could get out and have a look?”

“Sure! Just make sure you have something to mark your way back.”

“Like yarn.”

McGucket and Stan laughed.

Ford wasn’t jealous. He didn’t deserve to be.

The air in the canyon was humid. McGucket had taken the T-rex for the Mystery shop mech, but there were plenty of saponified dinos left. Ford took some measurements. Stan and McGucket stood off near an underground stream and laughed at some private joke. Ford gritted his teeth.

He looked up at the nearest specimen, a stegosaurus caught in mid-fall, limbs frozen as they splayed akimbo, face contorted with surprise.

“Same,” Ford muttered.

Stan came over. “McGucket’s gonna go find the pterodactyl nest. He’s hungry. You okay?”

Ford realized he’d been clenching his jaw and loosened it. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Stan didn’t bite this obvious bait for an argument. He was looking up at the stegosaurus. He whistled.

“Man, I'd hate to have somethin’ like this happen to me. ‘Specially at an awkward time like that. Or on the can. I just wanted to thank you.”

The final sentence was such a non sequitur Ford took a second to pick up on it. “Thank me?”

“Yeah. I know how it is. You’re probably feeling like, ‘i have this one thing my brother doesn’t also have.’ Maybe you’d prefer to keep it to yourself. But you share it anyway.”

Ford faced carefully away from Stan.

“I know how that feels, ‘cause that’s how I felt about the kids. But in the end, they weren’t really mine to hold back. McGucket is. So thank you, is what I'm getting at.”

Ford swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat.

“Fiddleford’s not mine to hold back either, Stanley. I did him wrong. I did you both terrible wrong, and I have no right to feel any way about it at all.”

Stan snorted. “Bullhockey. Just because you think it’s wrong to feel a certain way about a thing, doesn’t mean you don’t feel it. Trust me, I've tried.”

Ford was thinking about the perpetual-motion machine. He could not stop a pang of bitterness, even now, at the thought of the science fair.

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t extend the invitation if I'm not 100% behind it.”

“Hey, that’s what makes it so good, ‘cause you do it anyway.” Stan grinned.

Ford found himself grinning back.

_“Boys! How’s about we go back to the mansion and I make you the omelet of your lives!”_

The brothers turned and saw McGucket straddling a crevasse, holding a pterodactyl egg aloft.

“Erm, Stanley, should we really eat the egg of a miraculously un-extinct animal?”

“It tried to eat Waddles.”

“Welp. Exctincto-omelet it is.”

They walked back to the vehicle. Ford lagged behind, studying the man in front of him.

The man was of no particular note. He was not especially large or misshapen. He had no outstanding features, save for one: it was his brother.

 

“Would I be forward to dub this ‘extincto-licious’?”

“I might even be so bold as to suggest ‘extincteriffic’ and ‘finger-licking dead.”

“I ain’t had an omerlet this rich since I raided the owl sanctumony!” McGucket frowned, spoon halfway to his mouth. “Feels kinda wrong though.”

“Oh, so wrong,” Stan agreed.

Ford’s phone chimed. He gaped at the new notification.

“Speaking of wrong, Lazy Susan’s sent me a FriendBook notification. She wants a date.”

“Better you than me.” Stan stabbed at a thick orange yolk with his spoon.

“...with _both_ of us.”


	7. Monsters and Movies

The ad read:

 

> Ed Crowley’s Royal Ragtime theatre proudly presents a Saturday movie matinee, double feature. _Radium Man_ and _The Land Before The Time Before People_. Seniors and students discount. No 2-man horse costumes.

Ford frowned at the paper.

“Stanley, does something strike you as...off about this ad?”

“Heck yeah. 2-for-one prawn salad? Suspicious as a 2-man horse costume.”

Ford rolled his eyes. “No. The movie ad. Do you remember who owns the RR?”

Stan came into the room, patting his face with a towel. “Now that you mention it...wasn’t the owner Old Man Fudge? Closed down after I, erm, _someone_ started flooding the market with bootlegs.” Stan squinted. “At least I think it closed.”

Ford got out of the recliner with a grunt. “The theater wasn't’ in operation when I came back out of the portal. What are the odds that someone would suddenly renovate an old movie theater a scant month after the Weirdpocalypse?”

“Back-alley craps odds.” Stan studied the ad upside-down. “Louisiana steamboat poker odds. 3-card monte with marked cards odds.”

Ford nodded. “That’s what I thought. I think it would be in our best interests to investigate the theater this weekend.”

“What, just us? That’s a little, uh…”

Ford held up a hand. “Way ahead of you. I’ve got our cover story already plotted out. But, I'm sure you’re aware it carries a terrible price.”

Stan sighed resignedly. “Figures. Well, so long as it don’t involve no fancy dress, I'm up for it.”

Ford smiled. He formed a fist and held it out. “Mystery twins?”

Stan supplied his own fist and touched them together. “Mystery twins.”

They made an explosion sound with their mouths as their hands bloomed into mushroom clouds.

 

“Sta~an, are you ready yet?” Ford adjusted his bowtie in the mirror. He had forsaken the turtleneck, or even the mock-turtleneck, for a button-up shirt and a sport jacket. He wore suspenders with his pants and yes, he felt terribly old when he looked in the mirror and saw their father.

“Just gettin’ my shoes on.”

Ford entered the bathroom to find Stan wearing a stained wifebeater and briefs, digging in his ear with a q-tip. Ford covered his face with his hands.

“What? It ain’t _that_ bad. You shoulda seen me when I started.”

Ford shook his head. “Looks like it’s time for the patented Ford Pines Shuffle.” He picked up a comb and some pomade.

“Ey, only nerds get all spiffed up for dates. Men let it all hang out.”

“I don’t think that's legal in this state.” Ford shook his head again, flicking his twin’s cowlick. “At least get rid of that five o’clock shadow.”

“You kidding? This is after three shaves.” Stan looked in the mirror and sighed. “I guess it’s just not in the cards for me to look nice.”

“Now now, that’s defeatist talk. We can give it another shot.” Ford bustled off into his room.

“I dunno,” Stan said, “I don’t think you can really spit-polish—what?”

Ford had popped his head into the doorway, holding a can of sterno and a lighter. “Yes? Stanley? Come on. Pleeease?”

 

Autumn leaves blew across their path as the brothers walked in step down the sidewalk. Ford had his long coat buttoned against the chill. Stan had thankfully forgone his hideous hawaiian shirt for a white open-necked number that showed off the gold chain he was so oddly proud of.

“You ready to do this thing?”

“Ready as I'll ever be.” Ford looked apprehensively at the waxing moon. “Funny, I've faced the end of the world itself, and yet..”

Stan gave him a reassuring punch on the arm. “Don’t look so gloomy. Just follow my lead, and if it gets dicey, we bail.”

The brothers stopped on the front walk. “Well…here we are.”

“Should we knock?”

“Nah. we’re already expected.”

The front curtain twitched as Lazy Susan opened the door, clad in all the finery that the mall’s Dress Mess could offer.

“Well, we’re here,” Stan said, “but we ain’t wearin’ that sweater.”

 

“...now you boys find us a seat, I'll get the snacks.” Susan giggled as she walked off to the confection stand.

Ford discreetly edged closer to Stan. “This is weird. And she keeps pinching my butt.”

“So? I don’t even wanna _mention_ what she’s done to me.” Stan scanned the matinee.

The theater looked like it had stepped right out of the brothers’ childhood. Art deco scrolling infested the walls, the decorations were all gold leaf or red velvet.

“Looks like Louie B. Mayer’s crypt,” Stan ruled.

Ford was looking at the movie posters with a frown. _“The Lady from Hoboken. The Great Heist Caper. Our Man Melvin._ These movies are all from our childhood.”

“So? Someone’s got a bite from the nostalgia bug.”

“Stan, _The Lady from Hoboken_ was destroyed in a vault fire. They stored all the reels of nitrocellulose film stock next to the a pile of stage dynamite and oil-soaked rags. And _The Great Heist Caper_ was taken out of circulation following a copyright lawsuit from the writer of _The Great Caper Heist._ What are the odds that a single theater in a backwoods town would hold copies of these movies?”

Stan looked at the posters grimly. “Russian roulette with an automatic odds.”

The seats were alarmingly lumpy. Stan grunted as they sat, unsticking his feet from the floor with a sound of ripping velcro. Ford was cold-sweating at the salacious way Susan was eating her theater popcorn.

A thin man with greasy hair falling over his face stepped before the screen, holding hands up for quiet. When he spoke, it was in a voice that had almost but not completely made it through puberty.

“I’d like to thank Gravity Falls for turning out on such a momentous occasion. You all know me: Ed Crowley. I haunt the video hut. But what you may not know is that I am a film enthusiast, from head to toe. And tonight I wanted to give back to all of you what I have gotten in such great droves.”

Stan muttered, “jeez, get to the point.”

Crowley smiled, as if he’d heard. Ford didn’t like that.

Crowley walked off into the wings. The movie started, splashing a greyscale credit sequence onto the screen. The familiar whine of the projector made Ford’s stomach drop.

“Oh no,” he murmured.

 _Radium Man_ started with a space rocket expertly constructed by someone’s third-grader dangling on strings before a painted backdrop. Ford took a pen out of his pocket and dropped it conspicuously on the floor. Stan followed his signal, the two brothers bending over in their seats to converse by their ankles

“I recognize that sound,” Ford said, “it’s the holo-transmitter I threw together for the government back in the cold war. It’s meant to make semisolid forms out of light waves. It was supposed to be some kind of scare display to frighten the Russkies.”

“Didn’t work?”

“Worked too well. It made Ollie North wet his pants. I don’t know how Crowley got his hands on it, but we have to stop it.”

“How?”

“Well, first things first, we have to get out of these seats.”

The brothers gazed down the long corridor of faces awash in cinema light. As one, they sat up.

“Hey, um, dollface, we gotta go to the can. Both of us. At the same time.”

Ford slapped his forehead. Susan paid him no mind, eating popcorn and looking rapt at the screen. In fact, everyone in the theater was mesmerized by the screen, even during the brother’s fumble towards the aisle.

“Sorry—sorry—that’ll bleach right out—sorry—sorry—why would you even wear open-toed shoes here?—sorry—not sorry—sorry.”

Ford popped into the aisle like a cork from a champagne bottle. He managed to catch Stan, whose loafers had stuck to the floor at the last second. They snuck up the black aisles and out the theater door. Ford looked around for the staircase that would lead to the projector’s booth.

“Halt! I spy with my little eye a pair of multiplexers!” A rotund young man with a flashlight intercepted them.

Stan rolled his eyes. “Just let us through, Thompson. Something freaky-weird’s about to go down.”

“Like I'll take the word of a multiplexer.”

“Look,” Ford said, shooting a fierce glare at his brother, “we really do need to get to the projection booth. The future of this theater depends on it.”

“Yeah, come on,” Stan wheedled, “a little favor for your friend Wendy’s boss?”

Thompson stared Stan dead in the eye. “Mr. Pines….what’s my first name?”

 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Ford said as they ascended the dimly-lit staircase to the projection booth.

“Hey, it’s not like I wanted to. It was a last resort. And he’ll get over it, won’t you kid?”

Thompson, whose managerial vest was still hiked over a stomach bearing  a series of reddening handslaps, grumbled behind them.

The projection booth was more of a glorified closet. A gunmetal-grey construction took up half of it, looking less like a projector and more like a miniature city. Ford shook his head as he took out a crowbar.

“Thirty years you sat in the darkness. Thirty years it took you to live again, only for me to have to end it once and for all. I’m sorry, my creation.”

“Um, Ford? Don’t talk to your inventions. It’s creepy. Besides, they can’t hear you.”

“Oh,” Ed Crowley said, stepping from the shadows, “ _someone_ can hear you.”

Thompson dropped his flashlight. “Mr. Crowley! I’m sorry I abandoned my post, please don’t fire me. They made me do it! They gave me pinkbelly!”

“I’ll deal with you later,” Crowley said. His eyes were on Ford. “So this is the man who made my dream machine.”

“The name’s HELEN. It stands for Holographic Elevated Light Endoplasm traNsmitter.”

“Okay, now you’re _both_ givin’ it names? That’s some next-level creepy.” Stan said.

“I suppose I have to thank you,” Crowley sneered, “for creating the last machine this town’s ever going to need. Shall I reward you with a free popcorn?”

“Don’t do it,” Stan muttered, “it’s always the small.”

Ford shook his head. “I’m afraid this machine is dangerous. It must be decommissioned.”

“Oh, surely you don’t want to do that? You’ve seen the state of the town. Modernization is killing the classics, like video killed the radio star. The mall replaced the mom ‘n pop shop. Cell phones replaced opening a window and shouting. Even this theater went under due to the bootleg DVD market.”

Stan whistled innocently.

Crowley gestured theatrically. “Think of it. They used to make fun of me for my stick-in-the-mud ways. Now look: they sit mesmerized by my movies. And who’s to say I have to stop here? I can make every day movie night. Think of it: all the B-movies you could ever want. _Disco Werewolf. The Day the Earth Sat Down. Dr. Blood’s House of Slightly More Blood._ Every movie that ever was, accessible through this machine.”

“Did you forget who you were talking to?” Ford asked. “I’m a scientist. I’m all about progress. I literally cannibalized three other inventions to make this machine. Just because you get HELEN going—”

“—still reeeeaaaal creepy the way you two talk about it—”

“—does not mean you are her master. Think! The projector is pulling up images from lost or forgotten films. What’s to stop it from pulling up extradimensional images and bringing them into this world?”

Crowley began to laugh. It started deep in his chest and rattled around his throat until it came bubbling out his nose and mouth. It might have been threatening from anyone else. From him, it sounded like a hamster trying to imitate the devil.

“What indeed, Mr. Pines? What! Indeed!”

In the theater behind them, a figure peeled away from the screen. Radium Man, a horrible abomination that resembled a stunt guy in several layers of foam rubber and tubing, stalked up the aisles and screeched. The audience did not move, faces dull in the pale glow of the movie.

Crowley moved over to the projector, petting it and talking in a baby voice. “Yes, we are going to show everyone, aren’t we dear?”

“Okay, that is mega-ultra-sugar-frosted creepy right there,” Stan said, slipping on brass knuckles, “and I'm done listening now.”

“Stan...you took brass knuckles on our date?”

“Yeah. Dad said to always bring protection.”

“I don’t think that’s what he—”

Their conversation was interrupted by a screech. A ghoul from _Dracula’s Frankenstein Academy_ flung itself from the shadows at the brothers. They grappled with it, Stan holding it at bay while Ford punched it in the kidneys. The ghoul suddenly collapsed as a flashlight pelted it in the face.

As one, Stan and Ford turned.

Thompson had straightened his shirt. Now he took off his nametag and threw it at the floor.

“Thompson will stand for a lot of things,” he said, “but hassling theater patrons? No thank you.”

The ghoul rebounded. Thompson grappled with it, using his belly for leverage. He wrestled the ghoul to the stairway and threw it down.

Stan and Ford gaped.

Thompson ran a hand through his hair.

“And by the way,” he said to Crowley, “ _I_ was the one who drank all the butter substitute.”

With a war cry consisting of his own name, Thompson hurled himself after the ghoul.

“Nooo, my precious b-movie beasts!” Crowley glared at the brothers. “You’ll all pay. Everyone will pay!”

“This may sound hypocritical coming from me of all people,” Ford said, “but you really are a nerd.”

“Co-signed.” Stan removed his brass knuckles. At a nod from Ford, he reached behind Crowley and gave him a wedgie. Thus incapacitated, Crowley could only wail as Ford took a crowbar to the projector.

 

“For deposing Old Man Fudge with a vat of boiling caramel, you are under arrest,” Sheriff Blubs pronounced.

In the process of being cuffed by Deputy Durland, Old Lady Caramel spat at the police officer.

“I dun it!” she cried, “and I'd do it again in a heartbeat!”

The brothers, along with half the town, watched from the sidewalk.

“That’s tremendous detective work, Blubs, but could you also arrest the guy who tried to murder the whole town with monsters?” Ford asked.

“Welllllll, we could,” Sheriff Blubs said, hand on his chin, “but the back of the police car gets pretty crowded with two.” He pointed at Crowley. “Don’t do it again.”

As the cop car drove off and the crowd dispersed, Ford sighed. “I guess we should just be happy the problem’s resolved.”

“Well I'm not happy,” Stan said, “that was anticlimactic as heck! I was expecting some big all-out fight with some monsters. Also, I've never seen this guy before. Wouldn’t such a shady character have popped up at least once in our previous adventures?”

Ford rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “Stanley, I'm too tired to care.”

Susan waddled up. “There you boys are! Are you just going to let a girl walk home alone?”

Crowley shook his fist, using his other hand to pull his shirt over his very pink belly. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Pines twins! Don’t think you’ve won just yet!”

The brothers exchanged a look with their date and each other. They turned to go.

“Eat it, nerd!” Stan shouted back at him.


	8. Firearms and Feathers

“...this one is also half plates, half li’l Gideon dolls. I, uh, _acquired_ them after the Tent of Telepathy closed down.”

In one of the storage rooms of the Mystery Shack, Stan pried the lid off a crate.

“Stan, as little love as I have for the little albino Quisling, I have to admit it’s a bit counterproductive to store crate after crate of his merchandise. Were you planning to ever do anything with it?”

“Eh. I've been chucking ‘em at those flying eyeballs and such.” Stan picked up a Gideon doll. “You know, with just a little work, this could turn into a perfectly good Stan doll.”

“Or you could just throw it away,” Ford said, batting it out of his brother’s hand. “Honestly, Stanley, you’re supposed to be _removing_ yourself from the shop, remember?”

“Well it’s hard, okay? I was a brand. A marketing force. It’s hard to just drop all that and walk away, right? You know what I mean.”

Ford squinted. “No. What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re supposed to be leavin’. But you keep inventing things instead of demolishing them.”

“Wha….when have I done that?”

“Last week, you invented that all-in-one coffee machine?”

“That’s because I wanted a decent cup of coffee that hadn’t been filtered through years of fossilized grounds.”

“And what about the mods you put on the Stanmobile?”

“It was riding low already. Hover conversion was a logical next step.”

“And what about the gnome trebuchet?”

They both paused as a wailing arced above their head.

“...okay, you’ve got me there. Completely gratuitous. But it’s so _fun_.” Ford deviously rubbed his hands together.

“No denying that. But it’s just a bit hypothetical you scolding me on my junk when you got your own junk to sort out.”

_“Hypocritical,”_ Ford said as Stan opened another box, “and if you think that’s b...bah...Stanley, are those firearms?”

“Six of ‘em. Someone threatened to bring a ladder into the house.”

Ford stared at his twin, a question in every line of his face.

“Long story. Remember when dad tried to teach us to swim by throwing us off that cliff?”

Ford raised his eyebrows.

“Anyway, my metal friends aren’t going anywhere.” Stan petted a little pea-shooter.

“What’s that big one there?”

“That’s the Glockenheimer. Supposed to be for hunting whales.”

Ford was shaking his head. “Stan, you know my feelings on guns.”

“Hey! You have a gun!”

“It’s a magnet gun. No projectiles involved.” Ford defensively stroked the holster. “Anyway, I can’t think of a situation that would necessitate a gun, let alone six.”

“I can.” Stan was looking between the merchandize crate and the gun crate.

Ford connected the dots. “Stanley, that’s…” he sighed. “...a really cool idea, actually. Let’s go.”

 

“Pull!”

Soos let go of the doll’s string, slingshotting it into the air.

_“Who’s cute as a button and always your friend? Li’l G-I-D to the—”_

The doll was vaporized by a spray of buckshot.

The brothers whooped, Ford tallying a mark on a pad of paper.

“That’s it for the punt gun,” Ford said, turning back to the crates, “what else we got?”

“The 3am special, the biggest handgun out of Juarez.” Stan held up a ludicrously large pistol.

“I don’t think it counts as a handgun if you can’t actually hold it in your hand.”

“Nah, it’s fine, we just rig a piece of string to the trigger—”

A pants-wetting screech echoed out from the forest.

The three men looked out through the trees. Soos discreetly shook the leg of his shorts.

“Did you hear that?”

“Prob’ly a mystery.”

“We should—”

“—check it out, yeah.”

The brothers left Soos in the yard, stalking through the forest.

“Boy, I hope it’s not a Gobblewonker,” Stan said as they stalked through the underbrush. “Fishing-trip-ruining overgrown tadpole.”

“Seeing as the sound came from a 55 degree angle, I think it’s safe to say it’s an aerial menace.” Ford squinted, calculating trajectory “from roughly...there!”

The brothers tromped through the forest, arriving at a rock formation jutting out of the ground. The formation had another rock at its peak, a roughly ovoid boulder. It had split in half. The inside was hollow.

Ford approached it carefully, feeling the temperature climb well before he got close. “Something very hot split that rock open.”

“Why’s it hollow? Is it a geode or something?”

“No, Stanley. I’m afraid it’s an egg.”

Another bowel-evacuating screech echoed from the forest. The brothers froze.

“Anything that can generate this kind of heat has got to be something big. An Ifrit?...no, they reproduce by spore. A phoenix? Well, that would explain the heat but the egg is far in excess…”

Stan wasn’t listening. He was looking at the UFO-carved cliffside above the town.

“Hey Ford, has the cliff always looked like that? All misshapen and stuff?”

Ford looked up. A black shape crouched on the edge of the cliff. As he watched, it unfolded from the rock and glided, wingspan exceeding that of a biplane.

“Oh...no,” he murmured.

As they watched, a bolt of white-hot electricity danced from the bird, etching a line of fire along the ground beneath it.

“Hot Golden Krugerrands!” Stan shouted, “it’s a frickin’ thunderbird!” He noticed the look Ford gave him. “What? We live in the northwest. Stands to reason.”

Ford shook his head. “That is a magnificent animal, but it’s going to cause untold destruction if we don’t stop it.”

Stan kicked a pebble. “If only we had, like, a really big gun.”

Ford gave him another look.

 

“...according to local myth, the thunderbird can only be felled by ‘snake stones’,” Ford said, turning a shiny bit of serpentine over in his hand, “it represents their enemy, the great horned serpent.”

“Boy, glad those things aren’t around.” Stan was packing the punt gun. “last thing I want is a shoelace with spikes.”

“Mr.Pines, are you and Mr. Pines sure this is the right thing to do?” Soos was sorting rocks. “I mean, isn’t this, like, a protected species?”

“Jesús, there hasn’t been a protected cryptid since the whole Skunk Ape fiasco of ‘79.” Ford closed his book. “Trust me, if there were any less immediate measures we could take, I would use them. But it’s the dry season. There hasn’t been nearly enough rain this year. A little lighting in the wrong place could spell a raging inferno.”

Stan paused from loading to throw an arm around Soos’s shoulders. “Look at it this way, kid. We’ll be able to sell thunderbird souvenirs. Thunderbird feathers, thunderbird bones, thunderbird burgers!”

“Stanley, do I need to remind you about why we don’t eat apex predators?”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re eating every animal that bird’s ever been with.” Stan rolled his eyes, tossing a few more pebbles into the barrel. “I’m not saying we actually sell the meat. I’m saying we serve cheap pork and call it that.”

“While dishonest and downright criminal, still a better decision.”

Another screech echoed from above the town. Soos cleared his throat and tugged on his swim trunks, which he had discreetly changed into. Stan squinted.

“One thing I can’t figure out: that egg was hot when we found it. But that thing don’t look freshly hatched.”

“The life cycle of the Oregon thunderbird is still largely a mystery, Stanley. Unfortunately, today is not the day to learn more about it.”

Stan had turned away, looking at the flight path of the great black shadow.

“I dunno,” he said, “something about this don't seem right. That bird doesn’t seem angry. Kinda reminds me of me,actually. “

Ford looked down at the gun. “Is the wadding packed?”

“Yes Mr. Pines #2.”

Ford sighed. “Very well, then.”

He pivoted the gun on the stand they had borrowed from the gnome trebuchet, following the path of the great bird with one eye. He just managed to lines up the sights…

...with the shape of his brother’s head.

“Cmon Ford,” Stan said, “hang on a minute.”

 

“...See, I thought back to the dinosaurs,” Stan said as he tromped through the undergrowth with Ford, Soos, and the one gnome who had been next on the trebuchet, “and when they snatched the pig. I hate to admit it, but the dumb lizard wasn't just doin’ it for no reason. “

“Schmebulock.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Stanley, every minute we waste talking, that bird risks immolating Gravity Falls.”

“Hang on, I got a point, I promise.”

They were back at the rock formation. Stan pointed to the scorched grass leading away from the split rock.

“Now look," he said, “when that thing burns the grass, it's all jagged, right? But look at this.”

The burn path was straight as a linear function, and much wider than the other paths they had crossed on the way over. Ford's eyes widened.

“You don't mean…”

Stan strode boldly down the scorchline, disappearing from sight as he went through the undergrowth.

“Over here,” he called after a moment.

Ford eyed the pistol they had brought along just in case. He discarded it with a sigh.

Stan was crouched in the undergrowth,  next to a nest of burnt twigs. A goggly chick the size of a bathtub squatted in the middle of it, toothpick neck wobbling under the strain of a head that was 75% eyeball.

“Aww, it's so ugly-cute,” Ford said, misting  up a little.

The chick turned its head and let out a mild terrifying squawk. Stan scratched its head, fingernails scraping over its pin feathers.

“So my guess is the big bird is looking for this lil guy,” Stan said, “he was probably due to hatch right about now. But he can't fly with these little stubs.”

He fanned out the chick's wings which, though wider than any other living bird’s wingspan, were not capable of lifting it.

Ford knelt in front of the bird. “It instinctively crawled into the underbrush to hide and then the parent couldn't see it. We need to get it out in the open.”

“Schmebulock “

“Yes, that too.”

The chick coughed, expelling a bit of ball lightning from its throat.

“Aww, can't we keep it?” Soos pled.

“Jesús, that would mean a natural disaster of mythic proportions. The thunderbird would snag whales from the ocean to drop on the town. It would shoot lightning so immense the we would be but a cigarette burn on the map.”

“Plus, this thing probably craps a ton.” Stan left off scritching its head. The chick mewled in protest. “I get enough work from the eyebat guano.”

The three men lifted the chick, grunting and staggering under the awkward weight. They carried it back to the tip of the rock, settling it between the egg halves.

Stan wiped his brow. “Any idea on how to signal that thing?”

“Ooh! If we had a big mirror, we could flash light in its eyes like that Archimedes dude!”

The brothers exchanged a look.

“While that is an impressive piece of trivial knowledge,” Ford said, “we need something that we can implement quickly and then get away. Perhaps I could modify the trebuchet...no, no, that would take too much time. If only I could create a positive ionic charge on the ground, that might attract the—”

The chick screeched.

There was an answering scream from the sky.

Ford discreetly shook the leg of his pants. “Um...how did you do that?”

“Easy. I yanked out one of its feathers.” Stan looked around. “Oh what, like _you_ had a better idea?”

“Well you did it, Mr. Pines,” Soos said, pointing, “it’s coming right for us.”

“See?” Stan folded his arms smugly. “...crap in a bucket, it’s coming right for us!”

The four dove, scrambled, and gnomed off the rock just as the downdraft from an immense pair of wings blew everything back.

The thunderbird clasped the rock formation as if it was perching on a twig. Up close, it resembled a giant black condor, its oily feathers sheened with iridescence.

The chick gave an indignant squawk. The adult bird didn’t answer. Instead it put its immense head down on the rock. The chick hop-flapped its way up the adult’s neck until it disappeared into the mass of feathers on its back. There was a rustling of plumage and then the chick’s head popped out like a periscope.

Satisfied that its offspring was comfortable, the thunderbird launched itself from the rock. It kited on an updraft, circling higher and higher until it disappeared into the clouds.

Then and only then did the men come out of hiding.

“Wow, that was both magnificent and scary,” Soos said.

“I’m glad we were able to help,” Ford said, picking a burnt twig from his hair, “and I'm glad I didn’t jump the gun. Literally. Thank you, Stanley.”

“Ah.” Stan shrugged.

“What made you hesitate?” Ford prodded. “I thought you’d leap at a chance to use your guns for something other than skeet shooting.”

Stan was looking up in the sky, blue reflected in his glasses. “Well...it’s stupid.”

“No. Go ahead.”

“It’s just…” he sighed, “it reminded me of me. It reminded me of the stupid pterodactyl too, sure, but when it didn’t grab the nearest available hog, I realized it was looking for something. Looking really, really hard. And I thought of the kids, and how I'd react if I couldn’t find one of them all the sudden.”

He tilted his head so that his eyes were visible again. “Stupid, I know. I’m not a bird.”

Ford was looking at his twin with a hint of a smile. “No, but you know how to think like one. And you saved everyone's bacon again.” He clapped Stan on the shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

“You want we should put the trebuchet back together?”

“Eh. it can wait.”

“Schmebulock.”

“I don’t care if you didn’t get a turn, it can wait.”

“ _Schmebulock_.”

“I will pay you ten li’l Gideon dolls if you never say that again.”

“Schmebulock.”

“It’s a done deal.”

“I got a whole load of pants to do when we get back. Anyone want to contribute?”

“Me.”

“Me too, unfortunately.”

“...Schmebulock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I 100% admit the "serpent stone" thing is made up. The punt gun is real though. It was made for shooting pigeons. En masse. and it killed off the Passenger Pigeon. en masse.  
> The skunk ape fiasco occurred when a group of government agents camped on a skunk ape breeding ground in the middle of rutting season. it got ugly. and stinky.


	9. Bigfoot and Bunions

Stan twirled a fork around his plate of pasta and plopped the resulting mess noisily in his food-hole. “I’m tellin’ you, Edison beats out everyone. The man  _ invented  _ the lightbulb.”

“No, he  _ marketed  _ the lightbulb. The man didn’t personally invent jack squat. He was a thieving bully.  _ Tesla  _ invented a lot of things Edison gets credit for.”

“Didn’t he also invent the death ray that accidentally caused the Tunguska event?”

Ford scowled behind his garlic bread. “That’s unconfirmed. You’re just throwing out baseless innuendos and gossip.”

“And you’re tossing around a bunch of ten-dollar words I only partially understand.”

“Wow, a whole ten dollars per word? You’ll be in the poorhouse by Christmas at this rate.

“Yeah, well...you sneeze like a kitten.”

Ford gave a mock-shocked gasp. “Take. that. back.”

It was Tuesday night, and Tuesday was spaghetti night. Ford stood to fish more long capellini from the pot. Soos’s patented bolognese sauce(containing cut up slim jims) and some grated parmesan rounded off the meal.

A knock sounded at the front door. Ford frowned, in the middle of scooping noodles. Stan looked up, tomato sauce goatee staining his face. 

The sheriff was at the door, his deputy lingering back on the porch.

‘Sorry to bug you like this, Mr. Pineses. There’s some kinda hellcreature running around out here.”

“If it’s the giant bat, I told you not to worry, it’s frugivorous.”

“No, it’s, erm, worse than that. You know where the Gravity Falls bass shop used to be?”

“Sure, on the corner of…” Ford sighed. “Let me get my toolbelt.”

Stan used his chunk of garlic bread to sop up the remaining sauce. “Can’t it wait? I’m all full of noodles and junk.”

“Stan, no one said you had to come with me. It’s probably just Pituitaur and Beardy having another tussle.”

“Oh, so suddenly I'm not good enough for your nighttime hijinks? You want me to just wait here while you’re snapped up by some slavering jerk-beast?”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just...get your coat on.”

 

The crunch of their footsteps was the only sound among the trees.

“Whaddya think it is? Some kinda half-beast, half-tree monster that powers its life on the souls of the forsaken?”

“Stan, that’s an awfully big leap to make.” Ford aimed the light up at the skeletal branches of the trees. “We haven’t even seen a body yet, much less—I dunno, some kind of soul lantern?”

“Whaddya think did it, then? A flock of Bigfoots?” Stan stopped walking to ponder. “Bigfeet? Bigfooti?” 

“The term for a collective of Bigfoot is called a Bunion, Stanley.” Ford switched the lantern over to blacklight, scanning the ground around them. “If it was a member of  _ Gigantopithicus mysterio,  _ there should be a—”

Someone shouted. Ford switched the lantern back and found Wendy Corduroy standing in the circle of light, ax in hand, pine tree cap on her head.

Ford sighed and lowered the lantern. “Miss Corderoy, what are you doing out here?”

“Same as you. I’m investigating some freaky-deaky stuff going down in my general neighborhood. I miss going on adventures.” She gave a daredevil grin and flipped her hair back.

“This is no place for—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘a woman’, go ahead and can it.” Wendy twirled the ax and stuck it in her belt. “I’m not going home right now. It’s football season. My dad’s eating the drywall as we speak.”

Ford, helpless, looked to Stan as a last resort. Stan had made a sandwich out of two pieces of garlic bread and a meatball.

“Just go ahead,” he said around a mouthful of food. “She’ll just follow us if we don’t.”

Ford resentfully led the way, arm up with the lantern. 

The crater where the bass shop had been still had errant bits of plumbing still sticking out of the soil. Ford looked from the pit to the track where the building had rolled, ambling along until it met with the lake.

“The bass shop was ball-shaped?”

“Sure.” Stan was almost done snacking, bits of food shrapnel flew out of his mouth as he spoke. “The world’s most spherical bass shop, ten years running.”

“Yes, I see that, but  _ why _ ?”

Stan shrugged. “Somethin’s gotta be.”

Wendy had gone ahead, poking at the churned-up dirt with her axe.

“Miss! Please wait, that could be very dangerous.”

Wendy met Ford with a finger that prodded into his chest. “Hey. It isn’t ‘Miss Corduroy.’ Call me Wendy.”

Ford blushed slightly. “Fine. Wendy.”

Wendy peered closer, copper lashes nearly fusing together. She drew back with a laugh.

“You’re blushing? You’re blushing. Omigosh, that is great! Does this mean Dipper will be adorkable when he’s your age too?”

Ford’s blush deepened, which only provoked more laughter.

Thankfully, Stan finished his last bite and saved him further embarrassment. “So, we know what happened to the shop. So what the heck did it?”

“I have—” Ford cleared his throat and continued in a lower octave. “I’ve concocted a Subsonic Arboreal Reverberator. The trees around here should have a memory of what occurred in their immediate vicinity.” He held up a small device.

Stan snatched it. “That it? It looks like one of those fertilizer stakes you get at the hardware store.”

Ford flung his hands out. “Watch it! Drop that and we’ll be in the middle of an Entmoot before you know it.”

Ford carefully stuck the device in the foot of the crater and then stood back. 

The trees began thrashing as if in rewind. The trees on the west side of the crater bent and then sprang back, as if allowing something massive to go past. Ford pulled the stake up and pointed. “That way.”

 

“...so...how’s post-Weirdpocalypse treating you?” Ford asked after minutes of awkward silence.

“Honestly? Kinda bored. High school already sucked, but now it just feels like a brussel sprout after Halloween candy. I miss adventuring.” Wendy used her ax like a machete, smacking errant branches out of their way.

“It does grow on you,” Ford admitted, “but academic achievement is nothing to sneeze at.”

Stan sneezed so hard he knocked an eyebat out of its flight path. Wendy laughed.

“Yeah, but it was so cool doing junk with the twins. Beating up a snobby unicorn, going to a gnome bar, finally using my stupid lumberjack training to shimmy up a robot tree—”

Ford stopped walking. “Mechanical tree, you say?”

Wendy stopped too. “Yeah. I opened the way to this crazy bunker with some kind of shapeshifter in it. Kinda bogus, but at the end of the day I think it was good for everyone that we went in there.”

Ford was cold-sweating now. “And the shifter?”

“We froze it.” Wendy was looking at him very carefully, in that analytical way that women had. Ford blushed again.

“Look,” he stammered, “I appreciate that everyone got out safe, but you should have been more responsible than to go down there with two children—”

“Whoa, whoa, why is this all on me?” Wendy crossed her arms and drew herself up to her considerably full height. “Soos was there too! He’s even older than I am, why don’t you give him grief?”

"B-be that as it may, I think you need to calm down—”

There was an audible smacking noise as Stan slapped his forehead. Wendy’s eyes widened and her mouth narrowed.

“Calm _down?_ Listen—”

Stan put himself between the two of them. “Look, Wendy, he didn’t mean that. He really meant to say that he’s sorry, you’re right, and chocolate is wonderful.”

Wendy blinked a few times. “It is,” she said guardedly. 

Wendy turned and walked ahead of them, leaping nimbly over logs and ducking under branches.

“Boy, you really  _ don’t  _ know how to talk to women, do you?” Stan asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Ford flushed and tried to disappear into his coat. “But I was right! It  _ was  _ dangerous down there—”

“And who’s fault is that in the first place?”

Silence.

“I’ll take that as an answer,” Stan said, turning around.

“Hey, Pineses! I found something!”

The brothers caught up to Wendy in a clearing. In a bare stretch of soft mud was the second-biggest footprint Ford had even seen. Stan crouched and poked it with a pencil.

“Whaddya think? Bigfoot? Manotaur? Some third thing?”

Ford frowned at the print. “No, actually. None of those would leave a print this size.” He also crouched to examine the print. “It’s odd. Anything with a foot this size must be massive. But the print isn’t deep enough for a creature that heavy.”

Wendy bent over next to him, long hair falling over his shoulder. Ford was suddenly warm.

“Whoa. So what if it’s, like, five little guys and one big flat guy?”

“Doubt it. Flatty and his five brothers skipped town ages ago.” Stan squinted. “And even he wasn’t this big.”

Ford pointed ahead. “Look, we’ll argue over the culprit later. I believe we can still catch him if we hurry.”

The trail led through Manny’s Sandcastle Farm, where the distraught farmer was weeping over his stomped crop. It cut past Oregon’s Biggest Doormat, which bore a large muddy wipe-mark.  It led through Vinny’s pick-your-own-wine vineyard, now little more than a puddle of grape juice.

“Wow, we really have some bizarre tourist traps, don’t we?” Ford muttered.

Past the sock emporium, over the giant trampoline, through the hacky sack fields, their culprit cut a swath of destruction. Stan held his sides as they ran. 

Finally, the trail dead-ended at old man Sprott’s farm. Ford panned the lantern’s beam around, just barely catching a flicker of movement before it disappeared behind the barn. The three of them fanned out, ready for almost anything as the lantern light fell on—

_ “A giant foot?”  _ Stan shouted.

The three of them gaped at a foot, hopping agitatedly, that ended shortly before the ankle.

“That is the oddest thing I've ever seen, and I once got into a fistfight with a talking chair.”

Stan frowned, studying the toes. Then he lit up. “Hey Ford! It’s a lefty, like you!”

Ford rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s enough now. We’ve got to neutralize it before it causes any more mayhem.”

Ford opened his coat and began choosing from a variety of rays and explosives.

“Wait.” Wendy stepped forward, hand held out. “This thing’s had a rough night, right? Well, I know what help  _ my  _ feet after a rough night.”

“What?” Ford looked at Stan’s expression of disgust.  _ “What?” _

“She wants us to massage it.”

“That thing? I don’t even know where it’s been!”

The toes curled in alarm. 

“Stop! You’re scaring it!” Very carefully, Wendy took her ax and began to trim away gnarled toenails. The foot relaxed.

The brothers exchanged looks. 

“Okay, look, we do this once and then we never talk about it again.”

“Like the poison ivy thing?”

“Exactly like that.”

“What poison ivy thing?” Wendy asked.

“Oh, well when you go camping and you forget toilet paper—” Ford was cut short by Stan elbowing him in the chest.

 

The brothers walked home, arms around shoulders, Wendy goose-stepping in the middle. 

“...and that’s when I broke up with Reggie. I kept the tennis racket, but I never had it re-strung.”

“Wow, that sounds very stressful for you,” Ford said. Stan shot him a thumbs-up when Wendy wasn’t looking.

“Yeah, it was.” Wendy grinned and pecked him on the cheek. “You’re pretty sweet for an old guy.”

Ford put his hand behind his head and laughed unevenly. “You too.” he paused. “I mean—”

Stan and Wendy both laughed. Ford  joined in after a minute.

As they drew up to the Mystery Shack, they untangled arms.

“Mind if I go say hi to Soos?”

“You might wanna give it a miss. His ladyfriend is down from Portland and were giving him alone time with her.” Stan scratched his jowls. “Figured that would be best. She kinda de-weirds him a little, which is good. That boy ain’t right.”

“Fine then.” Wendy stuck her ax in her belt. “Catch you two on the flipflop.”

“...do you think I'll ever get better at talking to women?” Ford asked as they watched her go.

“Hey, it’s not like you can get worse.” Stan smiled and patted him smugly on the back. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn. What else do you have to do?”

Ford looked to the woods, to where a false tree lay.

“What indeed?”

Tomorrow. 

He was sure.

Tomorrow.

“Who’s first on washing their hands?”

Ford looked down at his own. “I’m going to stick my hands in a bucket of hand sanitizer, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Why don’t you just burn ‘em?”

“Oh for crap’s sake— _ one  _ time I got your eyebrow, Stanley,  _ one! _ ”

“Excuse me if I get a little salty over having my face set on fire—”

Still arguing, the brothers went inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for such a long break in-between chapters. I always run out of steam right around holidays.


	10. Bunkers and Brothers

“Now, you remember what I said?” Ford grunted as he turned the airlock wheel.

“Don’t touch anything,” Stan said, rolling his eyes.

“Exactly. Some of the security measures are old and may be weakened by time.”

“Why don’t I just stay up here with all the disaster food?” Stan reached into the 2035 box and put a handful of rations in his mouth. “Mmm, apocalicious.”

“Stanley, I wish you’d take this seriously.” Ford opened the hatch and put a foot in. “who knows what’s happened since I last set foot down here?”

“So? Just seal it off, pretend it’s not even there. Worked for all those Soviet missile bases.”

Ford gave him a pointed look.

Stan shoved a second handful of food into his pocket. “Alright, alright. But I won’t promise not to touch anything. Touchin’s how I figure out the world.”

Ford sighed as the security grid activated, pillars rising up from every surface of the room. He took a ball bearing from his pocket and bounced it over all the required symbols. He yanked Stan by his shirt collar through the open door just in time and shut it behind them.

“Just promise me you’ll listen to me while we’re in here. The last thing I need is for you to poke something and send this whole bunker up in flames.”

“Yeesh, whaddya have down here?” Stan squinted at a magnetic-tape computer. “And who designed this place anyway, Stanley Kubrick’s tackier brother?”

“I’m surprised you even know who that is.”

“I keep track of all famous Stanleys. We share a bond.” 

Ford side-eyed him as they set up equipment on the control panel. “Like the one you share with your brother?”

“Hey, you weren’t around. I had to make do with whatever I could find.” Stan took out a granola bar and tore into it, scattering oatmeal bits and raisins everywhere. 

Ford knelt and unpacked the perimeter sensor. “Now, I’ve thrown together this molecular neutralizer for dealing with...let’s call it a failed experiment. I only had enough for three bullets so watch—”

Stan snatched the pistol from his case and glanced down the barrel. “Neat. What happens when it hits non-freak molecules?”

Ford grabbed it back, heart hammering. “The exact same thing. Stanley, why don’t you go watch on the security monitors over there? I’m going to go to tunnel three and start dealing with the centispider colony.”

“Jeez, you made giant monsters? I thought you were trying to be less transparently mad sciencey.”

“I am.” Ford hunched defensively into his collar. “It’s just that when you set out to fight world hunger, sometimes you wind up making giant mutant arthropods in the bargain.”

Ford stood up and put an aerosol can into each ankle holster. Into the bandolier spanning his chest, he tucked a stainless-steel flyswatter. Shooting Stan one last pointer finger, Ford walked off into the tunnels.

 

Stan paged through the different camera feeds.

“Nothing,” he said in a bored monotone, “nothing. Even more nothing. Yet again nothing. Nothing’s brother: Zero. Nothing’s hot cousin: Zilch. Noth—” he straightened up. “Oh..my... _ money.  _ Dipper!”

Ford could hear it over the intercom feed. He squinted. No, it couldn’t possibly be—

“Don’t worry Dipper, I'll save you!” Stan whacked at random buttons.

Ford ran to the nearest camera he could see and began waving frantically. “No, Stan!” he cried fruitlessly, “it’s not him!”

Stan hit the right button, and the cryogenic capsule unfroze with a crackling sound. Dipper reared back in the chamber with an unholy roar. 

“ _ I...live...AGAIN!”  _ he hissed, draining of color and fusing into a protoplasmic blob.

Stan frowned. Then he hit the intercom button. “Dipper. Kid. what’s wrong with your voice?”

Ford stumbled into the hall, pointing the gun ahead of himself. “Halt! #210, get back to your containment unit. This is your first and only warning.”

The shapeshifter let out a shrieking giggle as it sprouted myriad little legs and skittered up the wall to the ceiling. Ford fired and missed. The thing had disappeared into the shadows up over his head.

_ “Well, well, well. You finally drag yourself back here. What prompted this visit, I wonder? Age finally catching up with you?” _

Ford rotated, trying to follow the origin of the voice, it was almost impossible to pinpoint thanks to the acoustics of the chamber.

“I didn’t want it to come to this, 210. I really considered you a son.”

_ “You didn’t even give me a name!” _

“A number is a sufficient enough nomenclature! You have an identity! I gave you a home!”

_ “You imprisoned me!” _

Ford sighed. “Well, you did try to kill me.”

_ “An adolescent tantrum!” _

“Multiple times. Really, 210, I can’t trust you to be left alone.”

_ “But I'm not alone anymore...am I?” _

Before Ford could shout, the shapeshifter dropped from the ceiling. As its mass bounced back from the impact, it flowed upward to form an exact duplicate of Ford.

Ford sighed and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “You’re really going to do this?”

“No.  _ You’re  _ going to do this.” the monster giggled in Ford’s voice.

“Now you’re just being childish.”

As a reply, the impostor Ford thrust a glob of protoplasm suddenly outward, knocking the gun away.

_ Oh yeah, _ Ford thought as his doppelganger dove into his side,  _ we’re hitting  _ all _ the cliches here. _

He grappled with the shapeshifter, trying to heft it off balance. The shapeshifter was older than last time, though, and stronger. It continually flowed through Ford’s grip and reformed in a new area. The fight was steadily going downhill, and there were only a few things that could have make it worse.

“...Ford? Ford, are you there?”

Ford’s grip slipped. “Stanley, no!”

The shapeshifter looked at Ford smugly as it copied his form. Stanley walked into the chamber with a confused look on his face.

“Stan!” the shapeshifter gasped. “Thank goodness you’re here! My experiment is loose and it’s trying to trick you! Don’t let it fool you!”

Ford put his hand on the impostor’s face and shoved. “Don’t listen to it Stanley, get the gun!”

Stan gaped at the two struggling figures. “...the heck?”

“Do it Stanley! Now!” The shapeshifter got a grip on Ford’s face, one he immediately shrugged off. “Aim for the shoulder or something, but shoot first!”

“Don’t listen to him!” The shapeshifter put a little quaver into his voice. “Stanley, if you shoot me with that, you’ll kill me.”

Stan dove for the gun and lifted it, looking from face to face. He furrowed his brow.

“I don’t get it.”

“Stanley!” Ford dug his knee into the impostor’s side. “Quickly!”

Stan shook his head. His expression was unusually dull. The sight of it sent a nameless dread down Ford’s spine.

“I don’t get it,” Stan repeated, “there’s...there’s two more of me.”

Ford immediately forgot about the shapeshifter. “Oh God. Oh Stanley, no.”

Stan wiped his face with his free hand. He was looking senselessly from one face to the other.

“Why are there two of you?” he asked, “what’s going on?”

Ford felt the beginnings of a good sob build in his chest. He let go, and the impostor’s own momentum sent him crashing to the ground behind Ford. He walked to his brother, palms open, struggling desperately to maintain his cool.

“It’s me, Stanley,” he said in a voice thick with sorrow, “it’s your brother Ford. I’m ba—”

In the flash of an eye, Stan fired the gun past him. #210 writhed and screeched as the beam hit it, shriveling up like a piece of grass under a magnifying glass.

Stan crowed, popping out a smoking cartridge. “There’s one in your eye, you shape-stealing freak.”

Ford looked at him, face drawn and white. Stan had the good graces to look ashamed.

“Look, you were right on top of him,” he said, scratching the back of his head, “and I wasn’t going to fire when you were right there.”

Ford took three uneven steps over to him. Then he hit Stan on the shoulder. Then he wrapped his arms around him and pressed him into a hug.

Stan dropped the gun and squeezed back.

“Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, Ford,” he chanted, “sorry…”

 

Ford hid in the bushes just outside the front porch of the Mystery Shack. After a sufficient time period of alternately upbraiding and hugging his brother, he had let Stanley go to “run errands.” Really, he was just going to follow Stanley the minute he took off. Enough speculation. He was getting to the bottom of his brother’s mysterious dealings.

The Stanleymobile hovered down the long dirt road, somehow still managing to run like an arthritic horse even after all the work put into converting it. Ford followed, darting from bush to bush. Once the car hit the road Ford abandoned stealth, running as he pressed a hand to his side. Damn, maybe Stanley already knew he was being followed. 

Ford lost sight of the car a few times, but always managed to spot it off in the distance. Stanley was headed to the lake. But why? What illicit business was he up to? Ford prepared, yet again, to save his brother.

By the time he came wheezing up to the marina, Stan had already gotten out of his car and was shaking hands with the same shady individuals that had been in the back of the truck some weeks ago. A trawler sat in the water near them. Oh Stanley. Ford shook his head. International smuggling? Time to pee on this fire.

“Stop!” he called as he approached the dock. Stan jumped guiltily. His shady companions drew together defensively. “This chicanery is ended, right now! Stanley, step away from the boat.”

Stan kept in place, reluctant look on his face.

“Now, Stanley.”

Sighing, Stanley stepped to the side, revealing the legend _ Stan o’ War  _ freshly painted on the boat’s side.

Ford dropped his hand, gaping.

“Well, jeez, I was tryin’ to make this a surprise.” Stan smiled weakly and waggled his hands. “Surprise?”

Ford still gaped. Stanley walked over, grabbed his hand, and towed him over to the boat.

“Technically this was Soos’s wreck. There was a bit of business with your friend McGucket and, well, the kid had to tether it to the dock to keep it from sinking. So when you got back, I started thinking: why don’t we rebuild it? It was wrecked beyond even Soos’s repair skills, so a friend of his cousin Reggie—decir hola, Carlo y chicos.”

Carlos y  chicos  waved hi.

“—stopped in to help. Too bad you couldn’t wait one more day, we would’ve had the flame decals done.”

Ford was still gaping at the boat.

“Ford?” Stan waved a hand before his face. “Look, I wanted to tell you about it, but I figured you were having so much fun running around the Falls I'd let you be.”

“You  _ recreated  _ the Stan o’ War?” Ford was still gaping.

“Yeah. come on, I'll give you the penny tour.” Stan grabbed his hand and pulled him on board. “You got your radar setup on the console over there—standard equipment, but you can probably mess around with it, stick a few lasers on or whatever.” Stan pointed. “Now to the starboard side,  there’s the galley. I figured we could snag some ration boxes from the bunker, no need to just let all those nonperishables sit around ‘til doomsday.” He pointed left. “Now, on the port side is the cabin. I ain’t made of money, so we’ll just have the one room to sleep in.”

Ford stuck his head in. “Bunk beds? You put in bunk beds?”

“Well, technically they’re the lower and upper berth, but yeah.” Stan was watching Ford’s face anxiously. “Is it alright? I mean, do you think it’s okay?”

Ford wiped his rapidly moistening eyes. “Stanley, it’s...it’s perfect.” his voice cracked.

Stan’s face fell. “Well, I mean...I'm sure there’s a few things I missed…” his voice pinched with emotion.

Ford turned to him. “It’s okay to get a little emotional right now, Stanley,” he said, surreptitiously wiping his eye, “I won’t judge you.”

“I’m not crying. You’re crying.” Stan grabbed Ford and shook him. “Stop crying on my face, Ford!”

The two brothers embraced, using each other’s respective coats as a hanky. Carlos poked a head in and awkwardly retracted it a second later, gesturing the rest of the crew back onto the dock.

“Stanley?” Ford said after a long, emotional minute.

“Yeah, Ford?”

“How the heck are we getting this down to the ocean?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally, we're at the penultimate chapter. I hate to get all emotional like this, but I really enjoyed writing this story and I hope everyone had a good time reading it. For anyone who feels I might have missed an opportunity or glanced over something that would be interesting to explore in-depth, I might right a continuation to this universe somewhere down the line.


	11. Friends and Farewells

A surprising amount of people gathered at the dock. Stan scratched his head.

“Wow, look at that. What the heck do I say?”

“Just speak from the heart, Stanley.”

Stan cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming out. We can’t pay you.”

Ford swatted him on the arm. “I think what my brother’s trying to say is that it has been a tremendous honor knowing all of you, through all of our tribulations and trials you have been a steadfast people.”

Soos wailed, “M-Mr. Pines!” and buried his face into a comically large hanky. Melody patted his arm.

“Yeah, you bunch have been alright. Especially you, Pituitar.”

The manotaur nodded stoically.

“I guess...we ain’t always seen eye-to-eye,” Stan continued, removing his glasses, “but when the chips were down, we had each other’s backs, right? And that’s the important thing in the end. Doesn’t matter how different we are, that we don’t get along every second of every day, I…” Stan’s voice went even more gravelly. “...I’m really gonna miss this town.”

Ford blew his nose with a honk. Lazy Suzan came up and left a greasy lipstick print on each of their cheeks. Manley Dan subjected them to a round of handshakes. Soos got their shoulders wet with tears. Wendy gave them a hug. Fiddleford gave them a banjo. Pacifica pretended not to care as she slipped them a wad of cash. Schmebulock gave them the beetles he caught in his beard. Mayor Cutebiker entreated them to “git ‘em.”

And there were more. There were more and more and Ford’s head was spinning so much that he didn’t realize they were finally leaving until he saw the dock slip away. He waved until his arm felt like it would fall off and then waved longer.

Stan nudged him in the ribs. “Which way, skipper?”

Ford inhaled the breeze coming over the bow. “Second star to the right and straight on til morning.”

Stan squinted down at the compass. “...so, what, like...north-northwest?”

  


Then:

_Stanley sat on his hard motel mattress and stared at the phone. The room’s sole thin blanket was wrapped around his shoulders. The heat was off. It hadn’t ever been on in the first place. The air in the place was so cold you could almost hear the creak of it freezing._

_The hotel manager knocked at the door. “Pines? Pines, I got some guys who want your legs broke, answer this door.”_

_Stan ignored it, seated cross-legged on the bed. Eventually the pounding went away._

_Stan stared at the phone._

_Ma had always joked about them having twin telepathy, being able to send messages without speaking. Well, now it was time to put that to the test._

_Come on, Ford._

_Show me a little of that twin telepathy._

_Pick up the phone and call. Get me out of this purgatory. Talk to me, buddy. Come on._

_Eventually Stan’s stomach forced him to get up and seek food._

 

Now:

Stanley whistled as he tripped the short distance from the galley to the cabin, two tin cups of instant coffee in his hands. The tilting and skewing of the boat had been a learning curve, certainly, but now it was second nature, walking on a boat that was constantly in motion.

“Hey Ford, it’s morning.”

The figure in the upper berth groaned and screwed himself deeper into the covers. “Five more minutes, ma.”

“Come on. It’s like, 10:30 in Oregon time.”

Ford turned and squinted owlishly at the porthole. “Stupid perpetual daylight. It’s throwing off my circadian rhythms.”

Ford sat up and accepted the cup. “Did you already put the eggs on?”

“Yup. And flapjacks. A hearty arctic breakfast for the Pines brothers, yessir!”

“Stanley, a proper arctic breakfast would probably include blubber of some kind.”

“Eeurgh. I’ll stick to lard, thanks.”

Once breakfasted and clothed against the cold, the brothers assembled on-deck.

“Boy, global warming has really done a number on this place,” Ford said as numerous ice floes drifted past.

Stan scoffed. “Global warming is just a myth cooked up by the decoration industry as an excuse to put out Christmas junk in October.”

“How does that even—” Ford gasped and pointed. “Look, it’s the fearsome Qupqugiaq, terror of the Inuit peoples!”

A white bear that resembled a chubby centipede looked at their passing boat and yawned widely.

“Fascinating!” Ford scribbled into his fourth journal.

“Wonder how that thing tastes?” Stan was looking none-too-kindly at the bear.

“Stanley, even normal polar bear liver has a lethal amount of vitamin A.” Ford paused. “Also it would probably taste gamey.”

“Yeah, too bad. Learned my lesson with the albatross.”

“You cooked and ate an albatross? Didn’t you ever read _Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”_

“No, but I got a mariner’s rhyme for ya. ‘There once was a man from Nantucket—’”

“If you value your life, do not finish that limerick.”

“Whoa, captain buzzkill over here.”

“I am not being a buzzkill. Just because I confiscated the issue of _Biker Babes_ you tried to bring on board—”

The radar pinged. The brothers turned as one as a massive shape showed green on the display, tentacles longer than the boat. The ocean began to roil as rain spotted the deck.

Ford turned to Stan. “Are you ready for this?”

Stan held up a harpoon with a smirk. “Oh. _So_ ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, ow. Why do I keep writing for this fandom when it hurts to end every fic?
> 
> ...oh right, the unbelievably blissful pleasure of what comes before the end.
> 
> thank you everyone who read, I'm not ruling out a sequel at this point but I've kind of run out of inspiration for this particular plotline. 
> 
> not saying goodbye. just sayin'


End file.
